One new idea for every day in 2011. We're talking big, small, local, international, in action, and on the drawing board. Here's today's -- what's yours?
Michael Zachary doesn't want you to fund his project. In fact, his ultimate goal is failure.
The Boston-based contemporary artist is interested in Strange Loops, first conceived by physicist Douglas Hofstadter, who claimed that a "strange loop" would be apparent progression that ends at the beginning point (i.e. not progressing at all).
Zachary's attempting to apply this concept to online project fundraising tool, Kickstarter. He asks that pledges be made and progress appear to happen, but that the ultimate pledge amount be a dollar below his goal (in Kickstarter culture, not reaching the pledge goal means not receiving any funding).
If all goes as planned, he (and we) will all be back to point A.
"This Kickstarter campaign does not exist in order to fund my project, this Kickstarter campaign is my project," he writes. "I have reached the conclusion that the internet is simply one giant strange loop. Though it is potentially and theoretically a transformative market place of images and ideas, in practice it is simply a giant machine that allows us all to go through the same motions over and over again and end up in the same places. I like the idea of using the internet as a medium to make it's own structure and function transparent, and I like the idea of turning a machine on itself to see what happens."
Check out Zachary's Kickstarter for more information and feel free to pledge ... just don't go over the target. The goal, he says, is failure.
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