Missed Connections: I Wish I Said Hello

I Wish I Said Hello, ein irgendwie romantisches und auch deshalb tolles, interaktives Street Art Projekt aus Manhattan.

According to Wikipedia, a missed connection is an occurrence where two or more people are unable to exchange contact information or the information that is exchanged is lost. These missed connections are generally associated with romance, but they may also be business-related or otherwise. Through the use of publications and websites some people seek to reconnect with their missed connection.

We find there’s something poetic about this desperate hope for the reencounter, but also something very ironic about using the internet as the tool to achieve it. It turns out that in the era of social media, when we’re supposedly connected to anyone in the world, the network of missed connections is one of the most inefficient ones.

Our goal is not to be another platform for reconnection, rather than a celebration of everyday poetics, a physical mapping of a digital network, a commentary on the role of technology in human communication.

We try to encapsulate specific encounters into stickers. We combine parts of the original text with graphical elements that resonate with it. We use a common, universal style derived from public signage, as well as shapes and colors that imply the digital origin of the story. Once the illustrations are created, we place them at the exact location where that missed connection happened and we document it on the website.

Currently, a series of stickers are installed in different areas of Manhattan, but our goal is to provide a method that’s simple enough for collaborators to join and spread the movement through other cities.

(via Notcot)