Ok so from this point onward and starting tomorrow hopefully i will be able to document via this blog the trials and tribulations of a jar sent to Tokyo, a plush dog sent to London and a clock sent to Montreal. This is basically a spin off of the chain letter concept but with a communal twist. People receive these objects, personlize them, then have to pass them on to someone they know after having taken a picture of the object sent to me which allows me to publish the results online and documenting who gets these objects, how they got them and what they did with them.
I am interested in testing a few things here with this experiment. Firstly whether people are opened to not owning, if the value is collective and accessible by all members of the group is enough. Im interested in the modes of personalization which is why i have a fairly blank object (the jar) which needs total personalization, an emotionally charged object with little personalisation capacity (the dog) and a highly functional object with no emotional anchor and with a large personalisation capacity. I am interested in knowing how far these obejcts will travel, how large does the community around these objects get, how interested people are in the destiny of these objects. Will they seek for them? Will they wait till it happens to drop in their hands???
I am sending 2 of these objects tomorrow in the mail and so the games begin!!!!
Great idea! To improve the insights and feedback I suggest to send each of these objects to the three locations. This may allow you also to compare cultural responses from the differnt location to the differently emotional or functional charged object. How do you selected your reciepients? Similar age, sex or interest levels. What do you expect to learn? Maybe you could ask them also to write a short diary about the objects arriving, waiting for personalization, being personalized, comments from friends of the recipients, feelings/ideas about sending the personalized item back (giving up the newly gained ownership and mental/emotional effort of personalization). You could ask them about the impact of living with these objects for ashort defined time etc.
Do they require new meaning for them? For you? Will thy be send on for secondary/tertiary waves of personalization?
So many questions, I am looking forward to see the personalized objects, best JCZ