The Work
A single sentence placed into the city’s most confident commercial medium.“i just need someone to believe in me” appears unbranded on pedestrian-focused digital billboards across Auckland. No logos. No explanation. No call-to-action.
The work interrupts routine. It creates a pause in public space and invites a quiet internal question many passers-by momentarily step into themselves: who is this for — me?
The Scavenge
The billboard is not the endpoint. It is the signal.Following the placement, a limited set of 25 aluminium artworks—fabricated in the visual language of civic and traffic signage—are quietly placed in the immediate radius of the billboard sites. These pieces act as physical footnotes to the digital statement.
They are intentionally scarce. They are meant to be found and kept.
Discovery completes the work.
Public Behaviour as Medium
The project is built around an observed behaviour: people want physical mementos of moments that stop them. Tickets, posters, signs, objects—proof that they encountered something real.Rather than resisting this impulse, the work formalises it.
No instructions are given. No hunt is announced. People notice, wander, find, and claim an artefact. Social circulation follows naturally as discoveries are shared—not because they are prompted, but because they are meaningful.
The city becomes the interface.
Partnership Model
The work operates as a consortium.- Media partners provide unbranded billboard space, positioning the screen as a civic surface rather than an advertising unit.
- Fabrication partners produce the aluminium artworks, demonstrating industrial craft in a cultural context.
- Artists design the system, placement logic, and restraint.
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The public completes the work through discovery, movement, and ownership.
No partner appears on the billboard. Value is distributed through participation and cultural association rather than extraction.
Strategic Outcome
The project functions simultaneously as civic artwork and brand activation:- Demonstrates that public screens can still stop people and command emotional attention
- Translates digital presence into physical behaviour and movement
- Generates earned media through curiosity rather than promotion
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Produces durable artefacts that outlive the media placement