Last year here on BoingBoing, I blogged about an art project by photographer Justin Lundgren. A few months before Katrina trashed New Orleans, he printed postcards of photos he'd taken in New Orleans and left them in public places around town to see what the people who found them would do. Radio producer Adam Burke follows up on what became of the project after the hurricane, and produced this radio story for NPR's "Day to Day." Snip:
Each of the cards was stamped and destined to the same address, Lundgren's parent's house in Ohio. Lundgren scattered the cards in spots all across the city, and the experiment began. For some of the cards, Lundgren would watch from a discreet distance as a card was discovered, picked up, read and sometimes even mailed.
The result of his "experiment" was revealing. Fifty-three of the 99 cards reached their destination in Ohio, a good result considering some of the cards may have been lost, discarded or considered trash. The cards with messages that were mostly innocent or humorous survived the trip to the mailbox. The storylines that were somewhat sinister — an implied theft or threats of violence, for example — showed up less often.
Link to photos and archived audio of "Day to Day" radio segment on NPR (disclaimer: I'm a contributor there, too).
