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Coin Crossing: Guerrilla Art Project
Guerrilla Art Project #14
It’s all too easy to get stuck in a routine, walking through the city on autopilot without even noticing what’s around you. Guerrilla art, on my mind, seeks to shake things up, force you to take a second look, change your preconceptions about your everyday surroundings.
Most of my projects have been in urban areas (due to the high foot traffic, the diversity of materials you can alter/replicate/physically reconstruct, and the fact that people are often preoccupied with their lives.
However, this “piece” is not in an urban setting. It’s in the woods but on a fairly busy hiking and bike path.
Originally I wanted to experiment with different people’s reactions to finding money unexpectedly and this bridge seemed like a good place to examine this question.
However, it quickly became clear that even when people did take the time to stop and look around and actually saw the money — the allure of finding typical pocket change wasn’t enough to interest people. So after trying pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, I tried using half dollars, silver dollars, and even gold dollars, but this only caused about 20% of the people to stop and examine and or pick up the money.
