“TAKE ME PLACES” artwork is aborted
Last year at september Me and Andrea Suter started a location-based experiment with the name Take me Places. Our basic idea was:
TAKE ME PLACES is an art project, which plays with the notions of territory and dislocation, orientation and the loss of such. TAKE ME PLACES will travel around the world until July 2012. At the end of its travels the photographs as well as the added artefacts will be exhibited. TAKE ME PLACES plays with public spaces, is participatory, involves a random the public, is dependent upon it.
We decided to place two suitcases in public spaces. Each suitcase were equipped with a photocamera, kind of a map, kind of a container, and instructions. One suitcase represented an anolog version (Analog camera, paper maps, suitcase box for additional artworks) and a digital version (digital camera, digital map with QR Code, USB Stick as a container for additional digital artworks). People were supposed to take the suitcase with them and add some personal value to it.
suitcase in Berlin
suitcase around yarn
somewhere in vienna
We hoped that the suitcases will travel around the world. Furthermore we had the hope that we can uncover the different expression of people feelings based on the used digital or analog media. The project started well, especially the digital suitcase traveled nicely through Austria until it ended in Berlin. After the placement in Berlin we never got any feedback back. So unfortunately the experiment failed... During this time I learnt some weak points in our concept and technical implemtation, but in the same time I had some nice experiences. More about the project and some travel stories your can read on our project website.
Maybe at some time the motivation comes back to initialize an improved version of this experiment. I really enjoyed our low tech approach. What do you think about our project and do you know similiar digital artworks?
Nice idea pal 🙂
It’s a bit like the travel bug concept of Geocaching. You are supposed to take things to locations and make pictures and then you upload them into the portal for the community to see.
I guess if you put in cameras it was simply too much value, so someone said “thx for the camera… ” and dropped the suitcase in a can 🙁
Hey Mathias,
yeah your argument is strong. The value of the camera and the other stuff inside the suitcase seduce people to take for themselves. But we believed in the good part of a human 😉 It might sound naive but it worked at least for the first three persons. Furthermore, our intention was to present a higher value of the suitcase, so that the people get an higher motivation to join this experiment. However, we were wrong and you are right 😉