I've had my eye on this task for awhile, and I'm not entirely satisfied with what I did for it, but I figured I'd submit what I did and possibly re-do it later.

I felt that, as an sf0 player, the art/theft task presented an interesting problem: in order to test the efficacy of the artwork's ability to resist being stolen, one must also produce some sort of value in the work readily understood by the thieving public. Only once value was established could one then use this "art capital" to create and then frustrate the desire to steal it.

With that in mind, I papered a shoebox with a number of art museum brochures (thank the good lord I've been keeping these in storage for the last 4 years) collected during a trip to Europe. They ranged from the lesser-known galleries to the most value-inducing museum of them all: The Louvre. I figured that the brochures/guides might lend some of their artly aura and security protection to the box's contents.

Inside the box, I put a number of useless commodity objects: a key I stupidly took home from a hostel in Riga, a broken, old cell phone, an old cell phone manual (to a different cell phone), two American dollars (one coin, one paper), and some random foreign change that can't be exchanged here because its value is too small. I displayed these objects in value-inducing cases. Everything was krazy-glued together so that, if stolen, nothing in the box would have any value apart from its value as art.

Value inserted appropriately, I then decided upon my theft prevention device. I attacked this from two angles: the physical and moral. I put the box in a tree near my house so that it would be hard to get to, and if necessary, I could provide security by yelling at anyone trying to steal the art. I stabilized it with a ton of string and knots, and dangled some light bulbs, Las Vegas key chain, and a velvet ring-box (with ring-shaped car part inside) from the string. Then (and I guess this is an additional value-infusion) I put up a sort of fake museum-like text nearby to lend legitimacy and respect to this object as art. I didn't include a picture of the contents of the box, only a description in the museum-text.

I did this on Friday afternoon. My artwork unfortunately only lasted until Saturday evening when I discovered it mostly stolen, partly strewn all over the ground at around 9:00 pm...which means someone did their dastardly deed in BROAD DAYLIGHT. The shame. I suppose this only means that someone was sufficiently overwhelmed by their desire for art or the useless commodity objects it comprised to overcome the physical and moral obstacles to steal it.

It was an interesting process, I guess.