The Cupcake Project
1999-2001

The Cupcake Project was a web-based performance work that was performed by Jill Miller from 1999-2001. For two years, the artist infiltrated Yahoo Clubs fetish sites and posed as a schoolgirl looking for friends. Cupcake instant messaged with her friends for several hours a day, swapping stories and photos, and archiving all communications with the club members. The fetish clubs were not traditional "sex" clubs; there was no nudity or overtly sexual photos. Some of the fetish topics were: balloon popping, squashing food between toes, wedgies, sneezing, bandages and casts, android and doll-like women, menstruation, diaper-wearing, and stuffed animals, to name a few.

In essence, these communities were centered around the exchange of deeply private obsessions in a purely anonymous environment. The communities were created, maintained and shared by people who knew each other only through fictionalized screen names and constructed identities. The anonymity of the internet provided a shroud for individuals looking for kinship with others who share similar secrets. These people, publicly sharing their personal and intimate fixations, inspired the creation of The Cupcake Project. The goal of the project was to examine our notions of privacy in public spaces and to explore the idea of "community" as it develops between individuals who have never met in "real" life.