“Identity theft” is one of the most popular memes of the day. It is a sad phrase; one that strips our cultural understanding of identity down to a handful of information. Our individual identities are reduced to a couple of facts: name, date of birth, ethnicity, address, phone number, social security number, credit history and email address. This information is meant to locate us literally and statistically; it is not meant to “know us” personally.

The purpose of Self-Disclosed is to explore our relationship with this so-called “personal” information. Today this “personal” information is a medium of exchanged used to gain access to data, email, information, coupons, friends/chat online, etc. Because we don’t think of this information as currency, we don’t keep systematic records of where/who we have “paid.”

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Childhood Truths is a reactive environment that challenges adults to relocate themselves to the “baby blanket” (proportional to an adult) on the floor. The blanket consists of four baby toys that flip, open, close and move. That movement triggers a sensor in the Teleo system (microcontroller) that plays a story from my own childhood, revealing how I perceived the world was when I was a child. Each of the 1-2min stories shares a truth of my childhood. For example, the pink, hidden mirror unveils my belief, as a child, that evil-doers live within the looking glass during the dark of night.

Adults must, at the very least, sit on the blanket and move the toys for the environment to react and narrate a story. Forcing an adult into this “floor” experience on the floor brings him/her to a more open thought process. Art is no longer understood by looking at a wall, but, rather, on the floor in a play mat or story circle manner, similar to the experiences of a preschooler, but where the environment mediates the experiences of a child.