Waldemar took a nice pic of the box (and lots of other nice pics too). You can view it on Flickr. Thanks!

Pics of some notes, etc.

A few people left stickers, business cards, photos, and notes in the box.

The best note was from Josh, who said - "Thanks for you Karma Box. I cut my finger on another installation a few minutes ago and yelled to art cars for a band-aid to no avail, and you were here to save me".

No problem, Josh. Woulda done the same if I were there in person.

Get the dust off

OK, so I have been back a while now and haven't posted. I want to deal with all my pictures (Karmabox and otherwise) before blogging. I am doing this post while uploading to Flickr.

First off, I think the project was a HUGE success. People really seemed to enjoy the box, they got the concept (some even left a penny, ala the original name), lots of folks took pictures. Though I did not elected to put of the pics from the one dude and his penis. Maybe next time, man.

The experience with the Artery and getting art placed with constitute a post at a later date. And I think I owe some additional posts on getting ready.

I don't think I will be bringing the box to LA Decompression. First off, the box hinges suffered damage and only the center hinge is worth a shit now. Secondly, I think that a crowd in the city is going to leave me with a literal box of trash at the end of the night. We will be doing wrist banding instead. Look for us if you arrive in the early evening. I will be wearing my 'freegan' shirt and a Hawkeye Pierce style robe.

So with out further ado, here are the high quality pics I took of the box getting set up, during our daily visits, and getting taken down. And here are all the pics taken by visitors to the box.

Thanks to all who came by !!!

Hola, amigos. How's by you? I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but things have been kinda crazy getting ready for the BRC.

I know I owe you some posts about painting and decorating the box, but those will have to wait.

The box *is* looking great, courtesy of my friends Steve and Kenny.

I will have a lot to write up about installing the box on the playa and, of course, the change in contents over the week. Standby !

Flat Smiley in da box

I recently found out Da Bomb is working on the Flat Smiley Project for the playa this year. So I will be sure some nice card stock smileys are in the box for people to pick up!

take a picture why don't ya ?

Somewhere along the line the idea to have a camera with the box seemed like a Good Idea. Still not sure how this will work in practice. But we did find this kid camera in a discount pile. While the image quality is poor (640x480), it does mean that a practically infinite number of pictures can be put on a 2GB card. Plus the camera is easy to use, rugged, and runs on AA batteries. It will be interesting to see what pictures end up on it !


Total project cost:
$12 (3 LED solar garden lights)
$20 (2 LED solar flood lights)
$45 (for the box)
$50 (for camera, SD card, batteries)
-----
$127

My kingdom for a box !

When it came to the box itself, I wasn't sure what to do. The woodworker in me said "build it!". How hard should it be to knock together a box for crying out loud ?

Then reality set in. I didn't have access to a good wood shop. The box would probably be fairly heavy if made of wood. It would probably cost a fair amount given lumber prices these days. So I decided I should buy something.



I thought of a few different criteria that needed to be met -

• sturdy - the box should be able to take a fair amount of abuse
• size - it needs to be big enough to hold a fair amount, but not big enough to generate a huge wind load
• one piece - anything that snaps together seems destined for disaster on the playa

After some searching, which took a lot longer than you would think, we ran across this box in Wal-mart garden section which seemed to fit the bill. A couple weeks after I saw an even better box in another Wal-mart in the auto section. C'est la vie.

Note the plastic lid restraints failed immediately so I replaced them with some paracord.



Total project cost:
$12 (3 LED solar garden lights)
$20 (2 LED solar flood lights)
$45 (for the box)
-----
$77