Exactitudes

Well, TG has been released from the hospital (finally). The house has been readied, so while I await the arrival of TG and TW, I've been (of course) surfing the web.

Came across this site, called Exactitudes, while I surfed. That's exactitudes as in 'Exact attitudes'. It's an ongoing art project by Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek. They've photographed groups of people (mostly in the Netherlands), in the 'uniform' of their subgroup. One review I read said that these were the individual's own clothes, but none of the others mention that fact, so I'm not sure.

In any case, it's fascinating to view these 9-person matrices. I don't know how many there are, but I couldn't stop clicking through until I'd seen all of the ones on the site. There's a book available on amazon, too. (can't be bothered to link today, so look it up yourself!)

It all ties in to the concept that humans are most at home in... clans? herds? small groups, anyway. When our tribe gets to big, we instinctively begin to subdivide it, and to announce that subdivision through our dress, our speech, our mannerisms and so on. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. The key to making it a good thing is to grant our allegiance consciously, rather than just falling into allegiance with whichever group first presents itself. We must also be willing to retract our allegiance, should we find ourselves pulled in directions different from the direction of the group with which we've allied ourselves.

Anyway, even if that's gibberish, the pictures are still cool, and I recommend given them a few clicks!