The first of Arata's crackpot interactive schemes was his Secret Messages via Pine Cone kiosk, where a still little - known woodsy cryptographic technique -- allegedly used by George Washington at Valley Forge to secure a shipment of shoes from Ben Franklin-was demonstrated.
Audience members were invited to inscribe their own messages on the underside of the individual scales of a
dry cone, which was then exposed to moisture -- causing the cone to close up, its epistolary nature
concealed until dried out again.
The layers of audience engagement in this work are numerous and complex, beginning with the sheer absurdity of the activity, leading to the participants' complicity in this Jurassic Technology-styled fiction; the possibility of actually using the system to communicate with (or confess to) the artist, future viewers, or persons unknown; and finally the recruitment of the public in the creation of artifacts that resemble nothing so much as early 70s system-based conceptualism- series of more-or-less arbitrary texts arrayed across alternating Fibonacci spirals.
Audience members were invited to inscribe their own messages on the underside of the individual scales of a
dry cone, which was then exposed to moisture -- causing the cone to close up, its epistolary nature
concealed until dried out again.
The layers of audience engagement in this work are numerous and complex, beginning with the sheer absurdity of the activity, leading to the participants' complicity in this Jurassic Technology-styled fiction; the possibility of actually using the system to communicate with (or confess to) the artist, future viewers, or persons unknown; and finally the recruitment of the public in the creation of artifacts that resemble nothing so much as early 70s system-based conceptualism- series of more-or-less arbitrary texts arrayed across alternating Fibonacci spirals.
