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It's just occurred to me that in Plot 1 at the Real exhibition, the artist Su Blackwell is exhibiting. I've seen Su's work in Kingston's Rose Theatre, where she developed the set for The Snow Queen, so I thought I'd make a postcard for her with a cut out tree. You can push this out and it stands up. I doubt she'll be very impressed, but it's a nice gesture.

In fact, to be honest, from what I've seen so far of the so called "Real Network" I doubt that they'll even put the card in her plot. So far they've been really slow updating pictures on the site, and plots 1-50 should all have at least one object in them as I've sent them all a postcard, but the site still shows many empty plots. Clearly it would have been embarrassing for the plot owners to have only one postcard from another plot in them, but is it really more embarrassing than having nothing at all? The first postcard I sent to Su isn't in her plot.

It seems that Real have been censoring the posts that come in or (I hope) just misallocating them. I know for one that they put a post intended for plot 25 in my plot, and was only moved because I noticed they had put it in the wrong plot and I know the guy who owns plot 25. I think that they're actually scared of the idea of a network, the idea of people sending post from one to another, and have been blocking post, so in truth this post is not just about writing to Su, but it's another test of the system.

The Real network had the potential to be a really good idea, but has underwhelmed as it's more like Sina_weibo than Twitter, and has thus become a poor example of why one should use Real networks over the virtual.

Where my REAL wall has always reflected the best of virtual social networks in reality, Real seems happy to reflect the more mundane aspects of Real life and has hobbled itself by including the worst parts of virtual social network in reality instead.

Finally The Real Network is getting interesting. I thought that the focus on plots was always flawed as it encouraged people to wax on about themselves in isolation in a way that my REAL wall doesn't. So I decided to break down the barriers and use it as a proper network, sending out to others.

The owner of plot 71 is called Frances Taylor and I met her on Friday when I went up to see my plot. She was lovely and I said in parting that I'd send her something to her plot.

She actually beat me to it, so here's my reply to her



As the post to all plots in the Real exhibition are freepost, I decided to try out a little addressing mischief. I wouldn't usually do this sort of thing if I had to pay for it, cos I usually like it when my post arrives, although I'm sure that Harriet Russell would have something to say about my reluctance to tinker with addresses

After 2 weeks of waiting for REAL post to come in, I took out an ad on an online classified ads site that's really popular here in London called Gumtree.

I decided that if I couldn't get the friends I know to send me post, then I just needed to make new friends.

At that time, Facebook had just set itself so that all profiles were publicly viewable for the first time (my idea actually preceded theirs but I'm not going to pull Zuck up about it) so the timing was just perfect for an ad like this.

I saved the original wording in an email and the wording you are reading are as close to the words as I could make them so that they still made sense today and didn't embarrass me too much (another early version of the ad can be seen on my blog.

This is being sent in to plot 45 today.

And in other plot 45 related news, thanks to you lot, my wonderful penpals and reader, plot 45 has outgrown the miniscule foot square cage they've given me, not once but TWICE! Where before the plot was housed in the main gallery with the other 100 plot, we now reside upstairs in a gallery on our own!

Keep em coming and I'll keep the my REAL wall retrospective coming from here!

Included in my welcome pack are about 50 Freepost envelopes for sending in my stuff. I'm not 100% sure how Freepost envelopes work, but this one seems to have a code, and I figure that as Royal Mail are paying I should be allowed to send in anything I like.

Only problem is that even the largest envelope they've given me is only A4, but my latest piece, the Interactive Tablet edition, is bigger than A4. So I'm going to send it in this padded envelope, which is a little larger.

Ideally I don't want to have to pay any postage, but I may actually have to take this down to the Post Office because I doubt very much I'm going to find a postbox with a slot big enough to take a 40cm piece of wood somehow...

my REAL wall retrospective day 2.

The idea here was to create a piece that conveyed the potential that I felt that my REAL wall had in the early days. I knew that the idea of sticking posts on walls was a great idea (heck it worked for Facebook!), so even though the wall wasn't getting any post I still soldiered on.


To convey the feeling, I created a blank wall by using a glossy piece of laminated wood salvaged from my next door neighbour's garden. I sawed this so that it was a nice size to hold and cleaned it up a little, before taping the edges.

The blankness of the wall and the invitation to write on it, complete with pens is designed to simulate and stimulate that creative urge I felt and still feel to fill that blank canvas with stuff!



I do hope loads of people do send in their statuses, and I've created a page on my REAL wall to display them all when they come in.

I've decided to use the Welcome to Real exhibition to run a month long retrospective of my REAL wall so far.

This first piece shows my decision to quit facebook and the small number of comments I received, which mainly suggested that living without facebook was not possible.

I went a year without it and in that time my life changed irreversibly for the better...

I'm currently taking part in a postal project in the centre of London called welovereal. They give me a "plot" and I need to fill it by sending post in. My first piece of post has to be a profile, for which the organisers have sent a preformatted profile page requesting a name, location and bio.

I've decided that my plot will be a pretty thorough history of my REAL wall, so I wanted to get off on the right foot with the profile, giving the audience not just the information requested, but a neat biographic preview of what is to come over the month.

Facebooks timeline format suited this idea and approach perfectly, but I did have to totally ignore the layout provided.

It was such a lovely trip back down memory lane to dig out these major events, and the whole thing took just over 4 hours to complete

I've been given a public space to display mailart at a new mail project that's opened in the very centre of London. The project is called Welcome to Real, and bills itself as the first network to be run by post. Regular readers of my REAL wall may have a little something to say about that...

Anyway, the idea of this project, sponsored by Royal Mail, is that they have a public display space in a pretty prominent place in the centre of London and they are giving a number of lucky folk "plots", which are little pieces of space to display stuff that is to be sent in by post. I've been given plot 45 to display in and I shall be running my REAL wall at that address until the end of the show, which runs til the 27th July.



I shall be doing a retrospective/live performance of my REAL wall, showing all the awesome stuff I've been sent over the years. You of course can take part and fill up my plot too mailartists and readers, just send all your mailart to me this month at my plot address, which is...

my REAL wall, Plot 45, REAL, The Royal Opera Arcade Gallery, 1-2 Royal Opera Arcade, London, SW1Y 4UY, UK

As part of my welcome package, the organisers have sent me a whole heap of pre-paid envelopes, which is rather nice. Me and Camel were wondering if the postage would also be paid for if it came from America. I don't reckon it will be, but it's gotta be worth a go.