last updated
1st August 2010

Artist’s Training Programme™

August 2006

A spoof website promoting a revolutionary new self-help training regime for artists. The Artist’s Training Programme™ has been researched and developed by Ellie Harrison BA PGDip, alongside two of the world’s foremost self-improvement gurus - Paul McKenna PhD and Dr Ryuta Kawashima. Follow for four week programme today and transform your practice forever!

Launch project

Work With Me

2007 - 2008

Work With Me is an international campaign to help find a long-term collaborative partner for Ellie Harrison. Read all about Ellie’s ambitions and desires, her influences and expectations for art and her outlook on life. Peruse the ‘testimonials’ written by a range of Ellie’s previous collaborators, friends and family members including Jon Burgerman, Anne Harrison, Bernard Harrison, Helen Jones, Sally O’Reilly, Niki Russell and Jennie Syson, and then decide whether you’re right for the job - or if anyone is for that matter.

Launch project

Confessions of an RDC*

2006 - 2008

In the years prior to the publication of her book Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector in 2009, Ellie began to catalogue her 16 major ‘data collecting’ projects in this patient’s-diary-style web log. Although never fully completed, the website still functions as an important archive of this period in Ellie’s practice (2000 - 2008) and provides previously unpublished insights into the objectives and outcomes of each of these projects.

Launch project

Tea Blog

1st January 2006 - 31st December 2008

For three years, Ellie recorded what she was thinking about every time she had a cup of tea (or a different type of hot drink). A total of 1,650 thoughts is now archived in the Tea Blog. They can be read chronologically starting with her last entry on 31st December 2008 or accessed randomly.

Launch project

The Challenge Series

January 2004 - ongoing

This web-based programme monitors Ellie’s progress as she strives towards achieving three momentous challenges over the course of her lifetime. For the first of these, the Trans-Atlantic Challenge, Ellie records and adds together all the lengths she swims weekly at her local pool in the hope of one day having swum the 5,400 kilometre distance from the UK to America.

Launch project

Eat 22

11th March 2001 - 11th March 2002

Ellie’s seminal ‘data collecting’ project. For one year and one day she photographed and recorded information about everything that she ate. The images were posted to the Eat 22 website weekly over the course of the year. The website was redesigned and relaunched in 2007 to coincide with the opening of the Wellcome Collection in London, where the animated film featuring all the images is now on permanent display.

Launch project

Gold Card Adventures

23rd September 2002 - 22nd September 2003

Ellie’s second major year-long project, for which she documented the total distance of all the journeys she made on London Transport in a year (9,236 kilometres), using her Gold Card - a yearly travel pass. This website details each of these 1,495 journeys she made and acts as an online version of the Gold Card Adventures exhibition at Piccadilly Circus Underground Station in London in 2005.

Launch project

Swear Box 2005

1st January - 31st December 2005

Throughout 2005, Ellie recorded every sentence that she uttered which contained a swear word. These sentences were uploaded to the online Swear Box at regular intervals over the course of the year, alongside a summary of the reason for the outburst. The work involved in updating the online Swear Box had a similar effect to the more traditional version of the box, in that Ellie only swore on 142 occasions the entire year which was considerably less than the 2,427 she did during her Daily Quantification Records project in 2003.

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Statistics Are Hot Air

1st January - 31st December 2003

An online version of the colour-coded bar chart which visualises the exact quantity of gaseous emissions Ellie produced daily throughout 2003. Each day of the week is represented by a different colour and each gaseous emission is represented by the addition of 15 pixels in height to each bar. In 2007 Ellie made a vinyl installation version of the chart.

Launch project

My Head’s Swimming

13th January - 4th April 2003

This random thought generator was Ellie’s first experiment in the collection of ‘subjective data’. For three months during the second term of her Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art course at Goldsmiths College she recorded all the thoughts she had whilst swimming lengths at her local pool. She found that swimming provided an excellent opportunity to reflect on all the things happening in her life at what was, during the build up to the US and UK attack on Iraq, a tense time to be in London.

Launch project

Bath Time

June - July 2004

This web-based project was made in response to a period of residency at Victoria Baths in Manchester in 2004. It features a series of micro-projects which reflect on the long and colourful history of this popular, ornate Victorian building, which has been closed to the public since 1993. It includes, among other things, a working clock made with numbers taken from the changing cubicles and an archive of memories dating back to its opening in 1906. Bath Time was launched alongside a community project devised by Ellie called the Channel Swimming Challenge.

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Project X

22nd April - 22nd July 2002

Beginning the month after the completion of Eat 22, Project X was a reaction to the sudden lack or structure in Ellie’s eating routine. The project pitted Ellie against her mother in a six-week-long diet and exercise experiment, in which they both became specimens. They were subjected to a process of constant monitoring and a weekly weighing-in session, from which the results were posted online.

Launch project

Greed

March 2000

Ellie’s obsession with documenting elements of her daily life began in New York City in 2000 with Greed. During a four-day visit to the city that never sleeps, Ellie decided to challenge herself to eat as much as was humanly possible and to document everything single last bit. She weighed-in before she left and when she returned and eventually posted all of the 34 images online as part of her first ever web-based project.

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