This past weekend Peter and I participated in Artscape. We had a booth on the bridge outside the train station alongside of “the duelling court”, “dunk the chump”, space alien fortune telling puppets, bunnieties fortune tellers, and other kooks. Our project was the Love Particle Accelerator.
Almost 2,000 people from the ages of 2-70 participated. Everyone seemed to have fun; even if they were initially skeptical. Several people meditated; several middle aged couples smooched; there were several dude parties; tons of young kids worshipped kittens and pizza; and I even had a woman hug me afterwards. Overall, it was our first attempt at making interactive public art and seemed to go over fairly well.
The instructions were to write or draw (with crayon on colored paper) something you love. Then you insert your love into the love box. Then you meditate on your love and hit the gong. Then you feel your love accelerate into the universe. It was so simple and corny and not pretentious or “arty” that I think it made people feel immediately comfortable trying it out. Even many of those who were initially skeptical left with huge smiles on their faces.
Here are some photos:

If you want to see more images check out this weblink:
http://www.imaginarycompany.org/LoveParticleAcceleratorComingSoon.html

We even made it to the blog spot at the Baltimore Sun…
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/midnight_sun/blog/2009/07/digging_artscape.html