Monday 6 December 2010

#1 the belated question

So after a few days of getting into the swing of the mailart365 project, this blog is finally coming alive.

The idea is to use the mailart365 project to think about something which has happened, or is happening in the world which exposes the spectacular mistakes humans sometimes make. I then make a piece of mailart which tells this story and send it to someone. Simple.

Usually the stories are about a decision that someone's made using a whole bunch of information which led them to a particular conclusion... and they acted on it with genuine good intent. Somewhere down the line it emerges that, for whatever reason, the decision did not take into account a vital piece of information and once that's discovered the very idea that someone had this first idea seems ludicrous!

Often too, the stories will feature some ideas which everyone dismissed but sometimes they work. The first story I told in mailart365 goes as follows:

It was a dark winter day when Andy decided he'd turn his back on society and quit the mighty mighty facebook. "Don't go" they said, "you won't have any friends left" they said, "you'll never get a girlfriend" they cried, "who in their right mind is gonna send you postcards to hang above your underpants?" they sniggered.


Yet less than two years on, here he is. Inspiring mailartists all over the world, about to get married and surrounded by more postcards than he could ever imagine. Andy, I've chosen myREALwall as the one to send my first mailart365 postcard to. Very fittingly, my project describes precisely the tale of the REALwall: questioneverything365 is going to tell a short story of things which turned out precisely how we didn't expect them to. This is an opportunity to uncover some serious miscalculations, spectacular gaffs and the unexpected.

So there we are; and off we go on a year long adventure to learn some fun things about human behaviour.

1 comment:

  1. Human behaviour summarised in 6x4 postcard format. A wonderful idea

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