ABOUt.

Instructions

1) Navigation

2) Viewing
Single-Click on gallery images and press View for a high-res version of the image

3) Media
Throughout the gallery you will find videos, pdfs, and other files that go with the works and explain context (See below). They are found on shelves and pedestals, double-click to open!
You will even find a midifile of the Taiwanese Garbage Truck song that still haunts my dreams. XD

History

In the beginning of 2021 I had discovered the Saganworks platform, the one which operates and hosts this gallery. I was so keen on the idea of sharing this specific subset of photos i had taken while living in Taiwan (2017-2020). I found the memory card from my old phone, the beautiful, stunning Samsung S7, and poured through the images, pulling out any that seemed to fit this bizarre theme. There was hundreds. I know I just said I wasn't going to get into it, but something about how clean Taiwan was compelled me to take a picture of garbage nearly any time I saw it. Because when I did, it wasnt like the litter we see in America, it was colorful, composed, sometimes stunning. After a whole week of sorting pictures, and whittling them down to the few dozen found in the gallery today, I was ready to share my creation. In fact, an publication that focused on online Asian consumer culture (actual asia, not asian-american) had an open-call on the theme of 'Responsibility'. I thought this would be the perfect way to submit a kind of portfolio, and snag some sort of photo essay opportunity. NFTs had also just gotten hot, and people weren't that hip to the technology, so again, I thought this could be a really cool tool to use as a showcase.

So i carefully perfected the gallery, virtually hanging and crafting external media and arranging the cyber-furniture. It took a good two weeks to finish the project in my free time, but when it was finished, I was thrilled. So I decided to send myself the first test link and... I couldnt find a share link. In fact, the gallery could only be shared through an email invite, and then users would have to create an account to view it. Which means I couldnt just drop the link on social media or send it as a submission. I would need any person that was to view the gallery's email address. Ok. Not ideal, but maybe I'll send it to a few friends, and send a short message to the magazine saying please make an account to view this garbage and cross my fingers that they would. Curious as to what the invite would look like, and if it maybe hid a link I could shorten, I sent the first one an alt account.

But I didn't receive it. Or I thought I hadn't. Turns out, the invite email gets categorized as spam by Gmail services, which is what, 95% of the population? So cool. At this point, not only did I need to convince someone to sign up for a new platform just to view the gallery, I also had to ask them to kindly retrieve it out of their digital trashcan. So I gave up. Well. I left a review, and urged their 'contact us' address to provide share links if they wanted their product to be actually useful.

The year went on and new projects sprang up. I worked on a music video, started doing watercolor portraits, I finished my thesis and started the sex robot show. Then I got kicked off youtube and all the hours i had spent editing my videos were in vain since I no longer had a way to reach an audience. it felt a lot like the same platform betrayal I had gotten from Saganworks all those months ago. The time off of youtube and editing needed to be filled and I returned to older hobbies that had piqued my interest during the past year. One of them was neocities. I started writing lines of html for the first time in well over a decade and having a blast. I decided I should make a tribute to Garbage Island page, log back in and snag some screenshots, and HOPE to demonstrate at least a feel for what I had made.