Addressing the World - Locating My Home From Across the World.

For a recent project of mine, I was asked to document a location anywhere in the world by using the app what3words. (It is an app by Chris Sheldrick, who created a new addressing system because a large part of the world doesn’t have an addressing system or anything so there’s this application which divides the world in 3 by 3 meter squares and gives 3 words for each square.) I immediately thought of documenting my home, Japan!

I asked my wonderful and hard working parents to help me execute my work and they did! It took some trial and error and some time for progress and ideas/thoughts, but in the end, we created something really unique. I communicated with them mainly through Whatsapp texts, calls and video calls to make this happen.

At first, I thought of documenting my room in my house, but then my parents and I decided that it wasn’t the best location. (see conversation photos). So I made them work on two other locations that really mean a lot to me, as I used to go to these locations all the time when I was younger and when I lived in Tokyo.

This is the park where I always went to:

Photos: 

Link: https://map.what3words.com/dude.then.went 

A park/walking path near a stream:

Photos: 

Link: https://map.what3words.com/flatten.poodle.warm 

But then my teacher advised me to show more of Japan/ its culture, so I thought do document our local shrine. The three words were : apply. zoomed. healers. I used to go there when I was younger to ring the bell, clap my hands and pray to the gods above. In my opinion, those three words fit perfectly. The memories of this spot really match it.

My sketch:

I took the idea of warmth and of purity to resemble the shrine and Japanese culture so I told my parents to wear all white and woolly clothes and to hold the three words on an A3 sheet of paper.

Link to location: https://map.what3words.com/apply.zoomed.healers

Here are the final results: