If my favorite song comes on the radio I am especially engaged because I know lots of people are listening to it alongside me, even though they aren’t in the car with me. The authoritative voice of the broadcast system seems to make the work more important. It’s a mode of framing that approves shared experience. Television does the same thing—the trouble it takes to get on TV (the glory of the audition and the superstar, and the bother of broadcast production) imbues what we view with weight and influence.

My interest in looking through windows and television screens at the way other people arrange their lives speaks to my curiosity about a “right way” to live. If we believe what the box tells us to believe, because the box tells us to believe it, where is our part? In my own work I am playing with the practice of actively engaging in the act of looking as an experience that links to thoughts about expectation, pleasure and responsibility.