Sarah King Mckeon and I prepared a six-course meal and interactive project for 13 people invited by the Berwick Foundation to an informal conversation focusing on the roles and responsibilities surrounding public art. For each course, each guest was asked to observe an aspect of the group's exchange, placing a wooden block for each instance observed. A sample instruction is, 'For every instance of gesturing you see, place a block on the table.' The observations related to aspects of collaboration: participation, listening, physical communication, humor and play. "Whenever your eyes meet someone elses, place a block on the table. By the end of the evening, roughly 1000 blocks were on the table.
The second 'block project' event took place in August 2007at the Gloucester New Arts Festival Headquarters. Residents of the festival stopped their work to eat, plan the opening festival event together, and followed simple instructions related to observation and placing blocks. Everything was left on display in the store window of the Festival Headquarters for the week of the festival.
