Rob Walker's Blog, page 38

Significant fake branding

Here's yet another twist on adding an invented narrative to a seemingly low-value thingamabob:

Designer Matt Brown bought a pack of 15 plastic horses for a couple of bucks. Then he dreamed up a name for each one, then packaging, reconceptualizing his two-dollar purchase as a line of toys, Night Horses, that were introduced in the late 1980s, and flopped.

Hey, remember Night Horses? (No, you don't.)

I love it!

More recently Brown has embarked on another project, turning some toy cars into...

Globe Paperweight

Object No. 40 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[Bid on this Significant Object, with hand-written story by Debbie Millman, here. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

The Mystery Object Revealed! Story-As-Object To Follow

Congratulations to Paula Newman, for scoring The Mystery Object with Story By Ben Greenman, with a $103.50 bid! The auction's final 30 seconds were pretty exciting.

So what is it? The answer below the fold, as they say.

The wily curators of Significant Objects will now follow up this story-without-a-known-object with a story that in a sense is itself an object. Debbie Millman has added Significance to a thrift-store doodad for us by way of a story hand-written on notebook paper — making the...

Fancy Piggy Bank

Object No. 39 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Martha McPhee, here. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

My grandmother gave me the piggy bank when I was four, for Christmas, wrapped in a box with bows.  She said, "A penny saved is a penny earned."  She said, "Find a penny pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck."  She wore a beehive of blue hair, had piercing green eyes, dressed in expensive-seeming c...

Mystery Object: To be revealed tomorrow

The most significant Significant Object yet?

[Tomorrow the auction for Mystery Object with story by Ben Greenman will conclude. When it's over, we'll reveal the object (first to the winning bidder, then to everybody else). Meanwhile, here is my case (borrowed from Murketing.com) for this as arguably the most significant Significant Object to date.]

The Significant Objects project has conclusively demonstrated that narrative adds measurable value to objects.

What does this imply about the...

Short-Short Fiction Contest!

Over at Hilobrow.com, a critical-culture website that I coedit with Matthew Battles, we've just invited our readers to enter a science-fiction short-short story contest. We'd be delighted to have Significant Objects readers enter, as well. Check it out.

CONTEST DEADLINE: February 15 (soon!)

STORY LENGTH: No more than 250 words

STORY THEME: troubled and/or troubling superhumans

THE JUDGES: Hilobrow.com editors Matthew Battles and Joshua Glenn; and Hilobrow.com contributor Matthew De Abaitua...

Wooden Armadillo

Object No. 38 of 50 -- Significant Objects v2

[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Randy Kennedy, here. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

Later, in the glove box, the police found a letter. It said:

"Letter To The Police,

All the stuff in the trunk and underneath the sleeping bag on the back seat is stolen (which is embarrassing because it's just old adding machines and rotary phones and things people don't use anymore, things I wasn't going ...

Significant Objects — the meme

An ad for YLighting, from the January 2010 issue of Zink Magazine

There's no doubt about it. A significant-objects meme has emerged in US culture, recently. I'm not just talking about Orhan Pamuk's museum. Over at Fast Company, William Bostwick writes: "Maybe it's the recession (it's always the recession), but we seem to be going through a phase of self-analysis-through-stuff." Here's an ad for YLighting, from the current issue of the magazine Zink. Readers, let us know whenever you spot...

Bear Shaker

Object No. 37 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Annie Nocenti, here. This story was chosen from the S.O. Fictionaut Group. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

This cold ceramic bear witnessed some electrifying poker hands. Saw leather-faced wide-brimmed Doyle Brunson run a ten three offsuit. Watched matchstick-thin Amarillo Slim bluff his fictive straight to the river. Set his beady eyes on longhair Chris...

Music Box

Object No. 36 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Nicholas Rombes, here. This story was chosen from the S.O. Fictionaut Group. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

The box.

Of course, the box.

How could he forget? The music box disguised as a gift box that everybody knew was a music box. She had kept it in the parlor (she called it that though no one knew what a parlor was) as if it had always existed, as if it...