The Real Good Experiment
In early November, Minnesota–based furniture and design company Blu Dot dropped 25 Real Good Chairs on the streets of Manhattan to see what would happen. Thus began the Real Good Experiment.
Camera crews were dispatched to catch the action and GPS devices, attached to and hidden on the bottom of the seat, tracked the chairs' travels. @bludotnews and @realgoodchairs tweeted updates and a map at realgood.bludot.com showed the chairs' movements in real time.
In mid-December, Blu Dot premiered the Real Good Experiment documentary film at their New York City showroom, which opened earlier this year. Just over eight minutes long, the film is a combination of footage of the chairs being abandoned (then rescued from the streets); scaled models representing the city and the chairs as they were carried, driven, and taken on the subway around town (and out to the boroughs); and interviews with some of those who took the chairs to their houses and gave them a home.
Despite clearly being a promotional experiment, the Real Good Experiment was fun to watch because who doesn't want to imagine finding a brand new Real Good Chair abandoned on the sidewalk on their way home? The live aspects--the Twittering, the GPS map updates--let you follow the action from anywhere in the world, and the documentary is a fun overview of and end to the project, plus its short duration makes it easy to digest. Was the project a ground-breaking, eye-opening experiment? No, but it certainly lived up to its name and was real good.
Watch the video at realgood.bludot.com/thefilm and check out photos of the experiment and the making of the film on the Read Good Experiment's Flickr page.
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The Real Good Experiment
In early November, Minnesota–based furniture and design company Blu Dot dropped 25 Real Good Chairs on the streets of Manhattan to see what would happen. Thus began the Real Good Experiment.
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I think I would have left it on the side of the road.
I would have taken that chair. I like it. Where can I get one of those chairs?
I'm with Lee! How long can anyone sit on a flat piece of steel? This is a classic example of design as a art object.
I love the look of this peas i have a place for it at home !!!!
I love modern furnitue but if I had of seen this chair on the street I would of assumed it was made by an eighth grader in a metal shop class! It is ugly and looks uncomfortable.
I absolutely woulda taken it. Lord knows I've brought weirder-looking stuff than that home off the street. I can see where it wouldn't be for everyone, though. It's kind of an oddball chair, but I dig itâmaybe not enough to pay the $129 for it. But $0 out of an alley is reasonable.
These were dropped from hands, yes? Thonet dropped his own design from the Urania building in Vienna 100 years ago. They survived. Would these?
Wonder if any of the people who recovered these chairs knew what a score it was! Saw these blu dot chairs at the ICFF last year and they are more comfortable than you think - I've been pining for the turquoise bar stools...
Interesting experiment but vastly unoriginal... These chairs are ok -- but quite uncomfortable...I saw them at ICFF also -- Much preferred a brand of seating called Varier!
They only did this because it was legally iffy to sedate, radio collar, and track hipsters in Brooklyn.
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