Appeel
Images
Appeel is a process, which is placed in a culturally active environment and which distributes itself like a virus through the interaction with individuals.
A wall is filled with round day glow orange stickers laid out in a grid. If a sticker is peeled off, the structure of the grid is changed. Over time this happens individually and collectively. But once off the wall the stickers have to be sticked somewhere else: They encourage to mark objects, walls, the environment, people. Slowly the little round stickers appear further away from their source and occupy more and more space. Both on the sticker wall and outside of it the stickers can even be used to paint images or write words.
This work was motivated by two things: One is the experiment to translate generativity, as a paradigm in the digital world, into the real world. To create a generative process, one designs a program which consists of certain fixed variables and methods and others which are dynamic, which develop over time and are influenced by interaction and/or time. Instead of working with software agents the process here is created by people. Some of their actions are very predictable, others can generate a surprising unforeseeable result, especially when they are interacting with each other.
The second motivation came from the context the work was designed for. We were asked to contribute a piece to a street-art exhibition. As this seems like a contradiction in itself and having a temporary hype around this discipline on the art market at that time, Appeel can be seen as a commentary. The orange stickers look very similar to the small subtle stickers which can be found on art fairs and in galleries, and which mark an artwork as sold. We were excited to find out what happens when these labels are not assigned by these institutions but by the visitors and what they would label as sold, as a valuable piece of art.
Article in German Newspaper Taz
