Congratulations to Paula Newman, for scoring The Mystery Object with Story By Ben Greenman, with a $103.50 bid! The auction’s final 30 seconds were pretty exciting. So what is it? The answer below the fold, as they say. The wily … Continue reading
Some weeks back we launched the Significant Objects Group on Fictionaut.com, as yet another way to bring new and unexpected voices into the project. We invited Fictionaut members to create Significance for the object at left — a music box. … Continue reading
Selected highlights from twitter.com/SignificObs: Fast Company/William Bostwick: “Our Objects, Ourselves.” bit.ly/5tux4l # Object that sells itself: http://bit.ly/4GgAnC # Nice writeup on Apartment Therapy by Tammy Everts– Thanks! http://bit.ly/8E4WtY # Can creative writing programs be ranked? http://bit.ly/6nzh0v # “The fingers of … Continue reading
With the close of yesterday’s auction, we’ve now passed $1,000 on the amount raised on behalf of 826 National. (By the way, we’ve added a snazzy “running total” box to the top of the right-hand column, have you noticed?) Big … Continue reading
“People buy stories,” but how does authenticity figure in? http://bit.ly/6bEEYo # More books repurposed into art. Great little stop motion animation though. http://bit.ly/4qHobQ # Interesting comment to this post, http://bit.ly/6pzpcI, relates S.O. to food sales: “What is “fair trade” if … Continue reading
Yesterday morning we closed the 25th auction of Significant Objects v2 — the halfway point, that is, of our project’s 2d “volume” — and so far our generous customers have parted with $931.54. So we remain on track to give … Continue reading
Behind the scenes at Significant Objects, heated debates shaped the table recently presented here, sorting each object into a specific primary category, by function. Among the most controversial objects: nutcrackers. In the table, the two nutcrackers that were part of … Continue reading
What’s a scientific experiment without pie charts? It’s incomplete, that’s what. So: You’ve already been presented with this data in tabular form. But these, you see, are pie charts. First: Story categories. (Previous category analysis, with table, here.) Second, object-function … Continue reading
With 21 auctions closed, our total sales for Volume 2 are at $774.04. Looking good for 826 National! (Shop here.) In other news our Facebook Page got its 500th fan the other day. As a reward to Fan No. 500, … Continue reading
Significant Objects will be back after the holiday. In the meantime, please enjoy the following significant-object poem, titled “The Things,” from the Jan. 04, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. It’s by Donald Hall. Reprinted here without permission. When I … Continue reading
As of yesterday, we’ve closed 17 auctions in Significant Objects Volume 2, with total sales standing at $653.04. So we’re on pace to make a nice donation to 826 National when it’s all over. Thank you for the bids! Keep … Continue reading
We’ll be back soon! In the meantime, you can still bid on objects — thus raising money for 826 National, and perhaps picking up a never-too-late unique gift for a loved one.
As you can see, we’ve launched Significant Objects, Volume 2. We plan to publish 50 stories, and auction off 50 objects, with proceeds at the end going in what we hope is an impressive lump sum to 826 National, a … Continue reading
Thanks for volunteering your efforts! As we move ahead into the next phase of the project — we’re calling it Significant Objects v2, at the moment — we are indeed lining up a new roster of writers. But before you … Continue reading
After several days of scrutinizing price data, it’s time to scrutinize the stories themselves. While Josh added “tags” in real time describing each object, lately we’ve decided it might be useful and interesting to add tags that describe narrative elements … Continue reading
We’re having fun geeking out over the quantitative aspects of Significant Object’s experimental phase, and this coming week we’ll offer more tables and charts and graphs. We’ll also kick off the qualitative analysis (i.e., analyzing the stories’ style, mood, voice, … Continue reading
We’ll be back with a savory table stuffed full of data tomorrow. In the meantime, please enjoy these holiday-appropriate tchotchkes. *** Oh, and if you want to get a jump on the Xmas-shopping crowd tomorrow, why not pick up a … Continue reading
Here’s another way to parse the data from the experimental phase of the Significant Objects project. After the jump, you’ll discover a table that not only lists the 100 objects, the authors of the 100 stories associated with those objects, … Continue reading
