Push, Pose And Share: Object Stories

Object Stories is an amazing project I was fortunate enough to stumble upon during a visit to the Portland Museum of Art last year.  It's concept is simple yet powerful:

"Drawing from material culture, thing theory, anthropology, Museum education, and traditions of storytelling, Object Stories, the Portland Art Museum's new installation, is an open-ended exploration of the relationship between people and things, the Museum and the community, and the subjective and objective.

Do you have an object you would never give up? Something that lives on your wall, your mantle, or buried in the corner of your dresser drawer? Something that evokes a time in your life, a place you miss, or something you hope for? These connections between people and their things are at the heart of Object Stories.

Object Stories invites people and their objects into the Museum to tell stories about things that matter to them—whether a postcard, military medal, childhood toy, or an iPhone. These objects and stories will be captured and published to an onsite and online digital archive where they will comingle with recorded personal stories about Museum objects. An installation of Museum objects, selected and told by the public, will accompany the digital archive.

By putting ordinary things and the public at the center of its inquiry, and calling attention to the things we overlook in our lives, Object Stories ruminates on the ways objects make us as fully as we make objects, and the myriad ways objects speak to and shape who we are—our ideas, emotions, values, relationships, and aesthetics. Object Stories offers new possibilities to shift the relationship people make with museums, reshaping the institution as an organic, ever-growing repository made collectively by us of our stories and objects, mundane and exalted, personal and subjective.

Objects have stories. Tell us yours."

It is a plain white box with a voice recorder and camera which asks you the simple question, what does a particular object mean to you?  In a week where we are talking about the power of questions in art and our community, I thought this was the perfect example of how a simple question can be so powerful and meaningful.


Object Stories from ArtsFwd on Vimeo.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS STORY

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS STORY

To listen to more stories from the Object Stories series check out their website or CLICK HERE.

Play Is Spreading + I Suck At Running

For some reason lately I have decided I want to become a runner.  This probably has something to do with the fact that my husband just ran a half marathon a few weeks ago (13 miles in 2hr 2mins!) and I felt like a lazy piece of !#(*! sitting in the bleachers watching all the other people (of ALLLL sorts of shapes and sizes) in the race actually getting off their lazy bums and kicking butt at life.   Although, as a knee jerk reaction to feeling lame in a sea of awesomeness I spent the whole day lying to people when they asked me if I was a runner too, saying how I had already finished the race, gone home, showered, changed and come back to meet up with some friends.  That part was quite fun...

The truth is, I am terrible.  I get about a mile (running pretty much as slow as death warmed over) before I start gasping for breath, or doubling over with a side stitch, or getting nauseous, or having a cramp in my leg, or a cut on my foot, or my eyes tearing so bad I can't even see… it's not a pretty sight people.

And then just because I apparently like public humiliation, I signed myself up to run a 5k at the end of next month.  Which leads me up to my main point which is, while I was "running" (or more accurately "spastically flailing around in a linear motion") in downtown Huntsville yesterday I saw something cool. True story.

Said Cool Thing:

I'm not going to lie, sometimes I'm pretty sure nobody else on the planet really cares about things like the importance of playtime besides me.  I talk to people about it, they nod politely and say something like… "hmmm, that's really interesting". (I've still never deciphered what exactly that means, is it good, bad? Anyone?)  So when I randomly stumbled upon this art installation downtown I was a tad bit excited! (that and the fact that it gave me an excuse to stop running for a moment and take a few pics while I sucked in air)

Don't projects like this just make the world a better place?  For more info on the project check out their website: LOVEHuntsville.com  Any ideas how can you spread a little play into your community?  We'd love to hear them!!!!

Playtime… it's spreading people!

Fun, The Great And Powerful

If you haven't gotten the hint already, the theme for this week is fun.  So far we've focused mainly on how fun and play can be beneficial in our own lives,  how it can make our brains actually get bigger, improve our emotional health and creativity and let us work more productively.  But what would happen if we harnessed the power of fun and used it to actually make the world a better place?  Well the good people of Volkswagen have been on a mission to answer this very question with their website: TheFunTheory.Com.  In their words:

 "This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better."

So far by using just the power of fun they have been able to reduce speeding by 22%,  increase the number of people walking up stairs instead of taking the escalator by 66%, and drastically increase the amount of people recycling and throwing away trash.

Not only have these projects bettered the environment and the communities health and safety, they have also spread the joy of fun into the lives of those who participated in them.  I mean, who doesn't want to live in a world with musical staircases and recycling arcade games?  I'm pretty sure I'd have the most well toned rear end of anyone around if I had a musical staircase in my house and I'm pretty sure I'd have to drag my husband away from the recycling bin kicking and screaming...









Also be sure to check out all the other ingenious creative ideas for infecting our world with fun that were submitted by people from all over the world HERE.  Or better yet, if you have an idea about how we could all inject a bit more fun into our lives, leave a comment below!  We'd loved to hear it!