Famous Hitch Hikers’ Safety Assured by Fine Art Registry™ Tags — Part 1
by David Charles - 7/17/2006
Continued...
The Project
Now that you have met the organizations and individuals involved in this extraordinary and unusual project, you can see how it all hangs together.
ISEA has scheduled the ZeroOne show the week of 7-13 August and San Jose is preparing for thousands of digital artists and friends and relations and fans to descend on it, much like a mini Olympic Games or Cup Final in the heart of Silicon Valley.
ISEA has accepted the “Hitchhikers in the Valley of Heart’s Delight” project proposed by YLEM members Jim Pallas, Julie Newdoll and Mike Mosher.
Jim Pallas has done his bit. He has cut and painted the hitchhikers, put GPS telephones in their guts hooked up to motorcycle batteries so they don’t die.
Very importantly, he has put a Fine Art Registry tag on each one and registered it with FAR®. The significance of this will be explained shortly.
He has shipped them out of his studio. His is the role of the loving parent who watches his/her children go out into the world and hopes that they will do well and make their way happily through life without further interference from said parent.
The first two hitchhikers are actually with their shippers but have not yet reached their places of abandonment (they might have by the time you read this–there’s a link below so you can check). This is what Jim has to say about it on 16 July 06:
“The latest is that the public access site is up and live, although the hitchhikers haven't reached their places of abandonment yet. They are on their way to them via shippers. Their peregrinations are illustrated at links on this site: http://www.ylem.org/Hitchhikers/” (This page is dynamic so you can go to it whenever you want to check on the progress of our famous five.) [The chances are that by the time you read this, all 5 will have been “abandoned” and you can start tracking their progress (we hope) at the link provided.]
This is Julie’s update on the project, same date:
“Yes it is all very exciting! Jim packed up the hitchhikers into crates–one for me with three of them for the Bay Area, not yet hooked up. However, Terman is on his way to MIT and Noyce is on his way to Iowa. We just made the web page live today. It is not perfect, but I am currently working on it with my husband. You can look in the meantime: http://www.ylem.org/Hitchhikers/
“To see the route they have taken, you need to go to that individual hitchhiker's web page. Links are at the bottom of the index page. You can see where they currently are right on the front page, but it does not show how they got there.
“I sent a crate of artwork once, ground, from New York to my home in California. To my surprise, when it arrived, airline info was on the box. In the case of the hitchhikers, they should really be going ground. Imagine, the airlines scan it and see a cell phone attached by wires to a battery? It would be tragic to end the lives of two of our hitchhikers if they were blown up by the bomb squad.
Also, they have working cell phones in them that are on, not allowed aboard aircraft (but at least the sealed lead acid batteries are rated safe for air travel.) In any case, we are all watching these web pages on pins and needles in case for some reason they end up on a plane. We have seen the route of the delivery truck(s) up to this point. Once, I thought they were headed back to Jim, but they were just making a sort of loop to Detroit.
“What will the path look like if they get on a plane? Who knows, and I hope we do not find out!”
[The crate of three headed for San Jose will not have phones installed till they reach California so we are not really worried if they are flown over.]
In a project which Mike Mosher describes as “full of optimism, hope, idealism and sentimentality,” the famous five are supposed to wend their way from their various points of “abandonment” through the kind help of curious passers-by to end up at various destinations. But who are these guys?
...continue article page 3: The hitchhikers ›
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