Six Degrees of Seperation

During one of the the progress meetings set out on a weekly basis throughout Unit X, my group and I did a short presentation on the progress of our zine, and our thoughts of production as well as influences that had got us as far as we were.
After talking about the idea of linking together our four ideas from our exhibition proposals, one member from another zine group suggested looking at the concept 'Six Degrees of Seperation'. At the time I had never heard of the concept, therefore I put it upon myself to do some research into the idea.

Image explaining 'Six Degrees of Seperation'

Six Degrees of Seperation was discovered by Hungarian author/poet Frigyes Karinthy, he believed that each person on the planet could be connected to any other person on the planet through no more than six steps, usingthe process of a friend of a friend or acquaintence etc.

Researching into this process I came upon the 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon', this both amused and fascinated me. Kevin Bacon the actor has recently been on the advert for the new mobile network EE, in this advert he is seen connecting celebritys and names and  items and all sorts of differnt people and things to one another; the idea of the advert being to stay connected. However this advert I have discovered has come from the idea of a group of university students who when watching 'Footloose' (Kevin Bacon film) began a game where they had to connect as many celebrities as possible to Kevin Bacon. This game then became a phenomenon, and now google has set up a 'Bacon Number' on its search engine. The Bacon Number is a the number of steps it takes to connect any celebrity to Kevin Bacon. After discovering this I spent a good hour trying to discover someone that could not be connected to Kevin Bacon...I now believe it's impossible.

After getting side tracked for a long amount of time discovering peoples 'Bacon Number' I then came back into how this concept linked in with the making of our zine. The concept strongly links in with our surrealist idea, however contradicts it at the same time. The idea has made me question whether it would be possible to link our four subjects together through a logiccal manner that made perfect sense.

Im glad the idea was brought to our attention in the progress meeting, if not for the benefit of our zine but for my own interest and entertainment. Whilst making our zine I will now see the connections we make between subjects in a new light.