Strange Objects Workshop with Trash Club | Morgan Mueller and Rashida Kamal

Born out of the curiosity to find the proper way to dispose of a regular tennis ball, Strange Objects is an ongoing experiment in noticing. The experiment is not so much in the quality or quantity of the output, but rather, in noticing things which are not being looked for. The goal will be for participants to take note of the life cycle of urban objects around them, and to collect those objects in a communal interface. An object may be considered strange (or estranged to us) when it falls out of our systems of understanding. Before an object is discarded, we closely and computationally monitor their journey – from manufacturer to distributor to consumer. A discarded object, however, exists outside of our usual, and perhaps privileged, means of seeing. This experiment will aim to bring discarded things back into the fold. As the organizers of this experiment, we will provide the infrastructure to capture what is being noticed. Each participant will be sent a field guide for discovering strange objects and a suggested mechanism to begin collecting each object that is encountered.