Comments on: About the Significant Objects project

By: Beth Barlow

Beth Barlow — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:39:20 +0000

Am doing a similar kind of project in England where I aim to change mundane and overlooked objects into art objects for sale. May be a link with this project. I find the monetary value of anything fascinating whether it be object or time and services. Our view of it all has become so distorted due to the ability to make things cheaply and quickly under exploitative conditions. It even reaches a point where our own value as people is mapped out by the amount of money we earn, effectively placing a monetary value on each and every one of us. Anyway I will get off my tangent now. My web page for Beautiful things project is here if folks are interested:
http://www.bethbarlow.com/completed_pages/beautiful_things.html

By: Etta

Etta — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:57:52 +0000

I just recently heard about the project and think it’s brilliant. I too would love to be a participant but understand that you are looking for ways for people to participate. In the meantime, I’ve decided to do it on my own. I won’t be selling the objects on ebay, but I will use little trinkets that I find at garage sales, thrift stores and antique markets as inspiration for my own creativity. Thank you for the wonderful idea.

By: Josh Glenn

Josh Glenn — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:51:03 +0000

It’s very difficult for me to believe that anyone thought — even for a moment — that ours was a Salvation Army project — despite our parodic/affectionate version of the SA logo. I wonder if the one or two people who were confused by our red-shield logo also get mixed up when they see someone wearing a t-shirt with the McDonald’s golden arches but it says “Marijuana”? — do they then attempt to score weed at McD’s? Anyway, we’ve decided to change our logo to the red mug version you see at the top of this page. It’s probably a better logo, anyway.

By: Chris Matlashewski

Chris Matlashewski — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:24:21 +0000

I concur with this project. Last year I bought a faux fur coat in St John’s Nfld for $3.50. Last month at after wearing this coat on the beach, jet skiing in it and wearing it out with with just the underwear and promoting its fun, I elected to auction it off for charitable cause and make the coat a annual event, the coat raised $4000.00 for the Royal Lepage Womens Charitable Shelter Foundation. Its all about a story. People always buy into emotion and reason with logic. I love mankind!

By: Carl

Carl — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:21:53 +0000

I will say, otherwise, a fine project…

By: Carl

Carl — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:21:12 +0000

Yeah, I’m with Freddy on this. My assumption all along was that the money was going to the Salvation Army, and it wasn’t until I saw his comment that I finally focused in on the logo and saw it was S.I. You need to change that.

By: Richard Marsh

Richard Marsh — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:48:38 +0000

Did you get your idea from Tahir Shah’s In Arabian Nights (2008) Chapter Six? In Omar bin Mohammed’s shop everything is free, but: “If you want to take an item,” he said, “then you have to buy the story attached to it.” … “How much does it cost to hear it?”

“Six hundred dirhams.”

“That’s eighty bucks,” I said. “The chest isn’t worth that.”

“I told you, the objects I’m giving away are not special at all. The chest looks nice but it’s worthless.”

By: Freddy

Freddy — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 09:49:59 +0000

What a beautiful idea, and what potential. Just one question: what drove the decision to appropriate the Salvation Army’s branding as a basis for the project’s logo? This intrigues me to no end.

By: Rob Walker

Rob Walker — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:28:21 +0000

Hello Julie. We have had many requests from people who want to contribute as writers, and that is very exciting. However, it’s also something we did not anticipate. We are working on a way to accommodate such requests, so please stay tuned to this site and hopefully we will be able to announce something about that soon.

By: Julie Whitenack

Julie Whitenack — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:20:43 +0000

Can I be a writer?

By: Josh Glenn

Josh Glenn — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:32:54 +0000

Thanks Mark, Michele, Ellen. And thanks Dylan — good to hear from you!

By: Dylan Tweney

Dylan Tweney — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:20:03 +0000

Wow, what a brilliant phenomenological experiment. I love it.

By: Ellen Jantzen

Ellen Jantzen — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:01:15 +0000

I see this system being applied to art. An artist can submit a piece, a writer creates a story around it and it is put up for sale on eBay.
I’ve just created a series of my digitally manipulated photo artforms that is titled “Tall Tales” because I feel each image is “worth a thousand words”. But, I am not a writer and created the images so that viewers could concoct their own:

Tall Tales

I have always loved a good story, fable, legend and am intrigued with the visual aspects they inspire. As one encounters (reads, listens to) a fable, they conjure and imagine. In this series I wanted to reverse the process and create the visual and leave the story to the viewer.

Again, I’ve captured images of ephemeral, staged setups I arranged in the “real” world and altered them in my computer to strengthen their narrative possibilities. Some are quite realistic, others are dramatically altered, each with an eye for the unexpected.

Ellen

By: Rob Walker

Rob Walker — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:12:54 +0000

Hi Annie,
Thanks, but right now we’re not looking for new writers per se. We have had many inquiries such as this, and I hope we will figure out a way to accommodate them. Please keep an eye on this site and I hope we’ll have news about that before too long.

Thanks for the interest.

By: Annie

Annie — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:16:14 +0000

How do you get on the list of writers for the objects? I majored in creative writing but work in journalism and would love to do something like this every once in awhile.

By: michele boyd

michele boyd — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:58:49 +0000

This is fascinating. I agree with the Prof’s suggestion about comparing story-value. But even without that data, it’s a great project. As for greg rowland’s ENRV’s…I sniff a wikipedia entry.

By: Mark Walker

Mark Walker — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:28:38 +0000

Cool project. This explains why I so badly wanted to buy items in the old J. Peterman catalog. With material desire, there is the near and the far that we long for. The authentic aviator sunglasses so well described in the catalog we the attainable nearby object. But they were needed to take us to the faraway destination – that of becoming the courageous adventurer of our dreams.

By: Josh Glenn

Josh Glenn — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:15:43 +0000

Thanks, everyone, for the comments!

Professor S and Greg (aka Professor X), thanks for the advice. You’re probably right. But your suggestions would take so much WORK.

Gladys — it is common to see pennies or other coins in eBay photos, to show the relative size of the item in question.

By: Gladys Santiago

Gladys Santiago — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:59:29 +0000

Why are the pennies included in the picture?

By: Randy Ludacer

Randy Ludacer — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:38:02 +0000

Great project! As far as “significant” objects enjoying an increased monetary value at auction: A long time ago, I used to work in the advertising department of auction house, Christie’s, where they’d sometimes put a lot of emphasis on certain objects’ so-called “provenance.” Being the subject of one of these stories will surely give each of these objects a strange sort of value-enhancing (yet fictional) provenance.