Tracking Chairs

Are you someone who would just bag a nice object found on the street and take it home? I certainly am and I have a large collection of ‘objet truve’ at home. I am not talking about steeling things, but reusing things that someone else has left behind or doesn’t want any longer. This is apparently called curb-mining.
Secondhand objects have somehow a special charm to them, marks of usage often add to the appearance and make them appear beloved and therefore valuable. It’s amazing what can be found. However in this example here, the object were left out intentionally for people to take home with a commercial idea in mind.


Images taken from clip by BluDot

The furniture and design company BluDot created a publicity stunt to mark the first anniversary of their NY Soho store late last year. Together with mono they created ‘the Blue Dot Real Good Exeriment’. For this they placed 24 of their chairs, product, Real Good’, on the streets of NY and tracked them as people decided to take them home. The public could follow the project on line and witness how the chairs traveled through NY. For some of the tacking GPS was used. They have modified basic GPS devices to fit underneath the seat of the chair. With its sleek thin design this was not an easy task. They even fitted it with an special activation switch, turning the GS device on as the chair is moved by the collector. The rest of the chairs was tracked old style by agents on roof tops with binoculars and cameras with triple dimensional lenses just like in any good old thriller. The whole project was a publicity stunt designed around involvement. I think it is a great idea. Of course the finder could keep the $129 chair but was ‘politely’ asked for an interview to use for the documentation of the stunt. The project has now finished but as a documentation here is a clip. Thanks to Radoslaw Panczak for the link.

Blu Dot Real Good Experiment from Real Good Chair on Vimeo.