Midterm Project - Intentions and Concepts of Piece

This group project is based around the idea of the artist functioning as a practical joker, where the audience is integral to the execution of the piece. We have created a box that will be hidden up in the ceiling of a critique space. In the bottom of this box is a hole, where a $20 bill is attached and falls through the hole onto the ground and back into a box via a arduino and DC motor. When someone is detected by the ultrasonic rangefinder within the box, this triggers the motor to wind up the dollar bill and reel it unto a spool. Once the area in front of the sensor is clear the bill will descend back to the ground as the spool with string unwinds.

As a work of art, this project incorporates ideas of the artist's joke, pranks as well as contemporary ideas centered around greed, lust and money. The concept centers around the participant where the piece is meant to be discovered through an investigation into the abandoned dollar bill. Current issues of the economy and of the mode or function of contemporary art are present in this work. The questions that may arise from this piece could be whether or not the dollar is actually attainable or who or what is controlling the retracting of the dollar. 

The prank as art artistic expression can lighten the sometimes highly critical atmosphere that a gallery space typically implies. This group project is our first rendition of creating a space that is based on audience participation with prank-causing objects that react to the persons proximity to the work. Other project ideas include using sounds devices or alarms, moving parts out from architectural spaces that project unto the viewer, and the use of tripwire sensors to replicate booby traps like "Indiana Jones" or Rube Goldberg types of machines.