Hello All!
This is the first time I have ever done anything like this before but I wanted to create a place where I could document the progress of The Steel Bridge installation on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, as well as receive feedback and open up a forum for discussion on the topic and how the over all project is coming along.
This is a forum build for thought provoking conversation and Ideas. Beginning with Maslow’s theory on Hierarchy of Needs and challenging it with Freudian thought regarding the unconscious mind and how Edward Bernays took these thoughts and applied them to the masses beginning in the 1920’s and shaping the consumer world we live in today, shifting our minds from what we need to an irrational desire of an ideal that can never be obtained.
This installation is questioning what our wants vs. our needs really are. These words have been fused together over time making it difficult to listen and understand the difference between the two. I encourage you all to walk the bridge, find the signs, write your thoughts and observe people. Start a conversation you otherwise would never have had with a passerby in regards to these ideas and the questions that are being asked.
Where do your deepest desires lie and how does that affect your decisions in understanding what it is you [want] versus what it is you [need]. Shift these words around, play with them and begin to understand your mind under and completely new light.
ENJOY! I can’t wait to hear what everyone has to say.
Wants vs. Needs 
I walked the bridge late last night, and found the many different types of people that this project has the potential to reach out to.
Starting on the west entrance of the pedestrian walkway, I found the unmistakeable and recognized triangle of needs. I read them the first time thinking, “yeah, I suppose that’s how it goes”, but the second and third time I glanced over the hierarchy of needs that was decided and accepted so long ago, I starting to think about and dissect the triangle with my own sense of individualism, finding that the structure did not fit my own moral and personal stance. Continuing my trek across the bridge, I found other little installations that provoked thought and pushed my understanding of my own desires and basic human needs and the difference between the two, and how I have, as Laura has mentioned, “fused” the two into a grey area of something I can no longer separate. At the end of my journey, ending at the east side of the walkway, there was a quote (I will save it for your own curiosity w/ an element of surprise!). This quote really hit home and challenged my very idea of what I truly need…NEED. A strange concept when trying to differentiate it from my core desire. Towards the end, there was a question posed, which put my head into a spiral of innate “needs”, natural human “needs”, “wants” that I thought were “needs”, and “wants” that I so badly desired, to the point of feeling like I really needed them. I left that bridge a wiser woman and I walk now with wisdom. Wisdom with which I will know the difference between those aspects and elements that I truly need, for survival, and desires, for my sanity. I encourage all of you to take this walk. To challenge your current ideas, to create a fluid wave of thought in which you might just learn something about yourself. Question everything. Learn. Grow.