The 1,400th Hidden Lives Expression

The best decision I made was...

to not worry about past mistakes and keep moving forward.

Hidden Lives expression from chibakita, 31 years old, United States.

The 1,300th Hidden Lives Expression

I wish the world was . . .

more like Canada.

casxsia, female, 19 years old, Greensburg, United States.

See the original expression at Hidden Lives.

The 1,200th Hidden Lives Expression

I suspect that...

I might be about to make a mistake. It's a great suspicion to harbour, keeps you sharp.nebra, male, 38 years old, Galway, Ireland.

See this expression directly at Hidden Lives.

A Beautiful Hidden Lives Entry

I'm ashamed to admit that...

I just broke a promise to someone that I love. And I probably won't let him know.

fakeghosts, female, 16 years old, elsewhere, United States.

Go to this entry on Hidden Lives.

The 1,100th Hidden Lives Expression

I grew up thinking I would one day...

be in control - now I'm not so sure.

Submitted by AngelaJ07, female, 20 years old, Sydney, Australia.

View this expression at Hidden Lives.

Looking Forward

Coinciding with my return to Australia, I was delighted to see Hidden Lives recently pass 1,000 entries . My first stated goal was to exceed 1,000 expressions from 25 countries.

As of today (27 June 2007), there are 1029 from 29 countries. So first goal met. More to come. More zeroes required.

Apart from some early users returning, the latest surge in traffic has predominantly come from a news posting in the excellent Design Is Kinky which led to a daily traffic record of over 700 unique visitors.

Some other coverage over the past month or two includes:

- a link from online magazine The Cud.
- a linking within the forums (somewhere) at Vogue.
- a link at the blog Look At This.
- a blurb at the 'subset culture' blog disassociated.com.

The 1000th Hidden Lives Expression

The best decision I made was...

to leave when it was the time.

1vet4pet, female, 0 years old, City of Dogs, Romania.

View this entry at Hidden Lives.

The 900th Hidden Lives Expression

The lesson I still need to learn is...

that there are people out there that will not hurt me and that I can trust...

Tezza, female, 26 years old, Canberra, Australia.

View this entry at Hidden Lives.

The 800th Hidden Lives Expression

I want to be remembered as. . .

as someone who did what they thought was right, regardless of the consequences.

blank_canvas, male, 23 years old, brisbane, Australia.

View this entry at Hidden Lives.

Some More Mentions

The recent interview with Lost At E Minor has provided an excellent boost to Hidden Lives. A few other links, postings and mentions are also helping drive entries towards the 800 mark. Here are a few links:

- The fun and creative Inspire Me Thursday posted about Hidden Lives yesterday.

- The NYC-based blog A Little Bit Harder seems like a fan of the site.

- The techmate blog on innovation in Australia somehow came across and featured Hidden Lives.

And I also submitted my own post promoting Hidden Lives to the interesting random magazine.

Another Hidden Lives Entry

I find meaning in...

creative surprises - new colourful images or sounds or tastes to jumpstart reality - pockets of others' lives that you catch a glimpse of - they flip your head around and remind you of your smallness and of the cotidian beauty available everywhere for our sampling. These moments are fleeting and beautiful, singular and they resist linear time constructions and are therefore replete with true meaning for me.

Mumu, female, 25 years old, Brasília, Brazil.

View this entry at Hidden Lives.

The 700th Hidden Lives Entry

If I wasn't stuck behind this desk...

I would be on a train trip. But I can't blame the desk, only myself for that one...

barry, male, 31 years old, somewhere, Australia.

The Intimate Revelations of "ham"

I have not featured a specific user before, just individual entries, however a recently registered user really caught my eye. Here are some of her beautiful entries.

ham, female, 16 years old, Gold Coast, Australia.

Before I die I will. . . drink instant coffee in a laundromat, jump into a pile of leaves, eat all the ice-cream in the world and sit on the sidewalk watching 'it' all go by.

When I'm alone I. . . close my eyes and dance

I wish the world was. . . flat, and that the sun revolved around us, that unicorns were real and that at the end of every rainbow there would be dancing leprechauns with pots of gold.

You can check out all 17 of "ham's" entries here.

Interview with Lost At E Minor

The ever inspiring and beautiful Lost At E Minor recently interviewed me about Hidden Lives. Here are a few excerpts:

LAEM: What led you to start it?
JM: I was reflecting on notions of identity and authentic voice - as I am prone to do - and my mind kept returning to the extraordinary gap between how we are perceived externally and our own inner awareness. I wanted to explore this somehow but did not know where to start. . .

LAEM: What are your plans for the site?
JM: At its core, I want Hidden Lives to become a unique, collaborative artwork brimming with intimate, beautiful and moving self-expressions from people all over the world. As to whether that artwork exists solely online, or in gallery exhibitions, public art displays or in hardcopy publications, well… I am keeping an open mind. Suffice to say, being in the 'big future thinking' phase is plenty of fun. . .

Read the entire interview here. And I would recommend subscribing to their weekly dose of pop culture and creative goodness.

Pssst. Share a Secret.

One of the issues facing Hidden Lives is that while people might love and enjoy unveiling themselves to the world, directly telling their friends about the site might make them feel uncomfortable (even with a made-up screen name).

This is the reason behind adding the pssst...share the secret function to the site. It appears on every page of the site, towards the bottom right of every page as you can see here.

This function allows you to send an anonymous email to up 5 of your friends, letting them know about Hidden Lives. Hopefully this will help people spread the word about the site without their anonymity being put at risk.

So go ahead, share the Hidden Lives secret!

New Triggers Added

Three new triggers have been added to the site.

The truth is...

My secret place to escape is...

My spirits soar...

Respond to these triggers by logging into Hidden Lives.

Stay tuned for a new feature that will make it easier for people to spread the secret about Hidden Lives while (of course) preserving their anonymity.

Mentions and Additions

Pleased to say there is now a 'forgotten password?' option for all those poor people struggling to keep track of their passwords. Registered Hidden Lives users can simply head here.

And here are a couple more mentions of Hidden Lives.

artfuture :: An interesting blog featuring "creative content from the edge" - Hidden Lives art project.

Hongkiat :: A popular blog network by the looks of it - Reveal your inner thoughts with Hidden Lives.

So the site is slowly building. I am on the road (again) travelling through southern Vietnam so promotion has taken a back seat. But Remko Steenstra and I are exchanging ideas on a few new and very handy features.

Also stay tuned, as there might be a few fairly significant mentions/links to Hidden Lives in coming days. Fingers crossed.

The 600th Hidden Lives Entry

I once believed that life was...

beautiful.
that racism had ceased to exist.
worth living.
that friendships would last forever.
easy.
that hearts couldn't be broken
and when Mommy kissed my owwies.. everything would be better again.

Hidden Lives entry from givingupwasyesterday, female, -1 years old, United States.

A Hidden Life Unveiled

Life is...

18% grey.

Hidden Lives entry Life is... from seeker, female, 41 years old, Madison, USA.

New Feature on Hidden Lives

A very handy link has been added to Hidden Lives. When you are viewing any individual entry, now you can quickly jump to every entry submitted in that category by clicking on the 'trigger' text.

So you can compare how different people from all over the world respond to 'triggers' such as:

When I look in the mirror I see...

Life is...

I wake at 3am thinking...

I still harbour a dream...

I want to be remembered for...

Another Hidden Lives Entry

Freedom is...

being absolutely honest with the world. When you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. Honesty is scary but surprisingly people are touched by it, however dark, tawdry and warped your inner thoughts may be.

Hidden Lives entry from Andy, male, 35 years old, Offenburg, Germany.

Another Hidden Life Unveiled

My life changed the moment...

.........I wore a black dress. For the first time this morning
being 9 yrs old wearing a black dress seems pretty weird, I want my pink , yellow or red polka dot dress.
where is mum by the way? **i am in thought** does she know dad is making me wear black?
Today i was going to wear all black, bubbles in my hair, beads round my neck black, shoes on my feet black. Still wondering where mummy is.
Today we bury mummy that's why you are wearing black.
.........my life changed the moment i wore black.

Hidden Lives entry from Lola, female, 31 years old, London, United Kingdom.

The 500th Hidden Lives Entry!

The entries keep on flowing at Hidden Lives and I am delighted to feature the 500th entry submitted. And it is a beautiful one.

"I believe... words and thoughts have more power and energy than we are led to believe."

Unveiled by autumn, female, 40 years old, somewhere, Bosnia and Herzegonia.

Tinkering with Hidden Lives

A couple of small but crucial additions have been added to Hidden Lives by the 'man behind the code' Remko Steenstra.

Most importantly, when you are viewing an individual entry on the site, you can now view all the entries from this user. The link has been added under the user's profile below the image.

You can also view all the entries from the same country with a single click on the country name, again in the user's details below their image.

For example, check out this entry from StripyButterfly in the United Kingdom. Then under the Contributed link you can view all of her thought-provoking 10 entries.

Or perhaps you just want to check out all the entries from Norway.

I think you get the idea. Simple but very handy additions to get more meaningful insights into the people's reflections.

Lastly, options to sort and filter Hidden Lives entries in a variety of ways have now been added to every page except the 'splash' page containing the interactive tally. These sort and filter options will become much more crucial when there is more and more content on the site.

That's all for now.

When I look in the mirror I see...

a virtual stranger. Despite being me all of my life, sometimes I look in the mirror and stare. I try to figure out who this person is that looks back at me. Trying to decide how I got where I did, and where I go from here.

Hidden Lives entry from JustMe, male, 46 years old, Mississauga, Canada.

New Bookmarking Tool for Hidden Lives

The extraordinary rise of social bookmarking continues unabated. To jump on this Web 2.0 bandwagon and also help spread the word about Hidden Lives, we've just added an excellent feature to the site. It's from Add This! and is essentially a button that allows you to bookmark the page you're currently on to just about ANY bookmarking service (ie digg, del.icio.us, technorati etc).

I've been experimenting with it on this blog (see below this post) and it seems to work quite well. So head over to Hidden Lives to check it out. And of course add the site (and some entries) to your various bookmark accounts.

I don't regret...

having loved and given myself to those who, looking in retrospect, really did not deserve me.

Hidden Lives entry from autumn, female, 40 years old, somewhere, Bosnia And Herzegovina.

Latest News & More Links

For (the few) current readers of this blog, you'll notice that I have been experimenting with how I display highlighted entries from the Hidden Lives site. I think the latest entry (last post) is probably the best.

The blog post title being the trigger, the user's response immediately following, then their image and anything I want to say about the entry I will put in the separate comments section.

A few more blog links to Hidden Lives although traffic seems to have dried up a little of late. A touch under 500 entries... I said that my first goal was 1000 entries, so no party poppers until then. Anyway;

- A posting on the brilliant Rhizome (connecting art and technology) website: unveil your hidden life.

- A detailed posting from a Malaysian designer at her jwhx blog New media art: Hidden Lives.

- And from the interesting Random magazine comes this mention in the section Net Art.

I once promised myself...

that when I was older I'd have the perfect life, the kind you'd see on prime time television, that my whole family would love me, that I'd have a big great group of friends and that I'd fall in love.

Hidden Lives entry from no matter, female, -1 years old, who knows where, Canada.

When I look in the mirror I see...

a very ambitious person who does a lot of day dreaming of doing great things but is too lazy to actually go about doing them.

Hidden Lives entry from vp, male, 24 years old, Chennai, India.

Official Press Release & Another Blog Link

I have come across some interesting online tools of late, some which work, and some, well, we'll see.

I came across PRLeap.com, a site specialising in distribution of press releases, and decided to give it a go. Of course, you only get real distribution if you pay, but there is a free version.

So here's a link to the official-ish press release (with quotes and all):

For Immediate Release: Creative Web Project Allows People To Unveil Hidden Lives.

And here's another recent blog link mentioning Hidden Lives. From an interesting organisation called Turbulence.org, who sponsor and support net art (yay!) and their networked_performance blog: A Social Experiment.

I wake at 3am thinking...

that I have to do something. Yesterday, I couldn't sleep, and I only get sleep after composing a song on my computer. I had to discharge that energy that was in my body. It's really weird, but is thus.

Hidden Lives entry from NIS, male, 18 years old, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Vote for Hidden Lives

There are a number of online destinations where you can help spread the word about Hidden Lives. So head along to the links below and help launch Hidden Lives into the blogosphere and social networking consciousness.

Digg :: user driven web content.

Technorati :: tracking blogs.

Stumble Upon :: brilliant website sharing site.

del.icio.us :: social bookmarking.

The Best Stuff In The World :: self-explanatory!

Reddit :: vote for sites and web stuff.

KillerStartups.com :: very dot com.

New Triggers and Interactive Tally

The ever so brilliant Remko Steenstra, brains behind the technical development of the site, has added a couple of small things to the site.

An interactive tally which is viewable on the splash page of the site. Lets people know at a glance how many entries are on the site as well as the number of countries. Check it out.

A few more triggers have been added to Hidden Lives. Now you can pause, reflect and reveal to the following triggers;

I find meaning in....

I don't regret...

I once promised myself...

I believe...

I tried to teach my children...

If I had kids I would...

So have some fun unveiling!

Further Blog Coverage of Hidden Lives

Here are a few more of the early blog references to Hidden Lives:

- Blogsunday commented, "Are you afraid to tell people your deepest thoughts? Show the world your inner self and the one your truly are!"

- Dipping into the Blogpond reviewed Hidden Lives and described it as an online PostSecret

- The Japanese Polar Bear Blog also gave Hidden Lives what appears to be a detailed review. But still no Japanese entries!

- Syn's blog linked all the confessional sites in one spot including Hidden Lives (and PostSecret again!)

- The interesting (and different) Flying Debris blog also took a look at the site.

Enough for now although there were a few other blog mentions, from Sweden (I think) and Argentina (my Spanish is pretty rough) and inclusion in some link lists.

It's certainly an interesting exercise tracking the blogosphere. Random and very unpredictable!

Life is...

"Life is... rara, absurda..."

Hidden Life entry from paloma, female, 36 years old, Madrid, Spain.

From Early Days Looking Forward

The original motivation behind Hidden Lives was one of curiosity. Of exploration. Of reflection and expression. There's a line in my journal from a few years ago saying, "I want to hold a microphone out to the world."

Obviously there is great potential - assuming the continued growth of the site - in exhibiting or publishing Hidden Lives entries in different ways.

Invariably however, the bulk of the feedback I have received is about the functioning of the website itself. A typical example comes from the excellent blog Tomorrow's Playground:

"Hidden Lives could increase the ability to engage and hold the user for a longer period of time if they provide some more interaction. The ability to save your favourite posts or subscribe to member’s posts would be a good start. Then again, Hidden Lives is still in Beta so additional feature sets may be rolled out soon."

So. While my primary focus is on getting more people to unveil themselves at the beta site - this being the crucial test of the concept - I am certainly spending some time thinking about what the site could do in the future.

Previously I had separated the website from the project. But it appears that this distinction is getting less and less meaningful. So stay tuned for some posts on possible new features to the site for the future.

The Question Marks on Hidden Lives?

A quick visit to Hidden Lives shows a number of coloured question marks in place of people's images. Example below.No great mystery there. These occur when registered Hidden Lifers choose not (or neglect) to attach an image to their account. Early days of the site suggest that entries with images receive more votes of appreciation.

Right now, there's only 1 entry in the top 20 'most votes' without an image. But as you can see here, it is a very moving reflection (full entry) from Spain. Words reproduced below:

"I once believed that life was... predetermined, that problems will get sorted, somehow. But experience taught me that we are masters of our own destiny, and that all our dreams are reachable, we just need to stop complaining and start fighting for them. Regret only what you haven't done."

Submitted by Trucha, female, 32 years old, Madrid, Spain.

When I'm alone I...

"When I'm alone I... have been known to dance and sing around the house. It reminds me of being little and listening to the record player with my sister and thinking we were the only two who knew how truly great Billy Joel was."

Hidden Lives entry from alissa, female, 25 years old, Pasco, United States.

My hope for the future is...

"My hope for the future is... to marry my wife a second time. I hope to see her look at me like that again."

Hidden Lives entry from Xamine, male, 40 years old, Bergen, Norway.

(Comment: I find this such a touching entry. And such a stunning image.)

I still harbour a dream to...

"I still harbour a dream to... never work again."

Hidden Lives entry from beached, male, 34 years old, Sydney, Australia.

(Comment: Simple, honest and what an image.)

Early Blog Coverage of Hidden Lives

These sites below link directly to the early references to the launch of Hidden Lives.

1. The first blog linking to Hidden Lives was Zern Liew from eicolab. And yes, he is a friend! But his site(s) are well worth a visit for a new take on creativity and business.

2. A close second was Andy Polaine whose Playpen blog on education, interactivity and emerging cultural forms is most certainly worth a visit. Andy is also a co-founder of the Omnium Creative Network.

3. Next come the excellent and influential Indian tech tips site by Amit Agarwal at the Digital Inspiration blog. Amit was the first to compare Hidden Lives to the Post Secret phenomenon.

4. And then there was this brief post on Pro Web Art.

5. And another quick reference at A Day In The Life... .

6. By this time the traffic was slowly building and it was certainly given a boost by The Blog Herald's detailed review and post 'Do You Have a Hidden Life?'.

I'll try to post some more blog coverage in coming weeks as it is an interesting experiment in tracking.

It must be noted that in the first couple of weeks, for all the blog mentions, the biggest boost to the site - without a doubt - has actually been the traffic flowing from the brilliant StumbleUpon site. A new discovery for me and one that is an essential web surfing tool.

A Taste of Windows Into People's Souls

As entries are submitted to Hidden Lives, collages of images (13x7) become randomly populated. This is one of the early random collages.

The official launch of Hidden Lives (beta)

After years of contemplation and creative development, and months in alpha, the beta of Hidden Lives is finally here.

This is the official press release.Everyone leads two lives.

An 'outer' life filled with day-to-day activities and to do's. Jobs, routines, meals, meetings, bills, discussions about the weather. And then there is the 'hidden' life. Dreams, hopes, fears, hopes, regrets and imaginings. The things you think but seldom share.

Hidden Lives is an online space where you can anonymously unveil your hidden life. And peek into the hidden lives of people around the world. Draw back the curtains at the newly launched website.

Hidden Lives aims to become a unique global artwork brimming with intimate, beautiful and moving self-expressions from people all over the world.

You can also be amongst the first to see the launch video posted on YouTube. Pause. Reflect. Then unveil your hidden life to the world.
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For more information:
Justin McMurray
justin[at]ideogeny[dot]com[dot]au
www.ideogeny.com.au
14 March 2007