In this episode, I mention my Instagram account as a possible source of random things to scroll.
Here’s a link to it https://www.instagram.com/art.wells/
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artwells finds things ep 3
In this episode, I mention my Instagram account as a possible source of random things to scroll.
Here’s a link to it https://www.instagram.com/art.wells/
3 replies on “artwells finds things ep 3”
Long time piler, first time filer…
What are your thoughts of leaving random things for unknown strangers? I have often considered riding around with a deck of cards and just tossing them into the world based on randomly determined cue, say a streetlight turning out as I pass. The moment I have noticed, say here leave someone else a message so I would reach into my deck of cards shuffle and toss whatever springs forth. And there it will wait at the side of the road for some other noticed to come along and receive whatever it is the whim of chance intends for them. Would that be simply casting a false hand in the shape of fate or is it perhaps a sort of proselytizing to the unsuspecting into opening a door they aren’t awaiting?
I love the idea. I’ve found a lot of things that I’ve known or suspected to be planted for someone to find. I’ve enjoyed that, but not as an oracular experience.
Playing cards are a great choice too. You can find online the history of placing playing cards as calling cards, or signalling for travelers the nature of the location (e.g. leaving a specific card to let others know that a kind person lives in a nearby house, or that the railyard has a really mean cop)
There are two considerations, though.
The easiest consideration is the perspective of the finder. They find it annoying litter, or fun or curious, or they give it a meaning of their own. This perspective probably should exist outside your intentions. You aren’t communicating anything to the observer, but you are creating an invitation, even a provocation, to think, maybe wonder. Once in 1981 someone took a broken lamp, carefully, tightly, and evenly wound its brown cord all the way up its wooden base, and set it on a hardbound copy of Gorky Park on the curb next to a telephone pole. Seeing it changed my life. And I still haven’t read Gorky Park.
The bigger consideration, though, is your perspective in doing it. Your role then would be similar to a graffiti artist, though significantly less destructive. But an artist nonetheless. You create something to react to or ignore. How would that change your experience at the moment you do it? Would you feel like you are launching messages in bottles, or notes in library books, or just yielding to the spirit of weirdness? As you take this on, would it become a compulsion? Would it make your relationship to streetlights or cards or travel different in a good way?
Regardless. It sounds fun, and is at its worse minor litter. At best, you could change someone’s life.
[…] month, I listened to a podcast episode, The Act of Noticing, and it really hit me in a profound way. I could simply look around for something to notice and […]