I’ve never had an appreciation for art that I can’t make heads or tails out of, and I’ve always secretly wondered what would happen if you took a piece of abstract artwork and rotated it 90 degrees.
So, last summer, I did it.
In the Starbucks off of I-240 and Penn in Oklahoma City (and, I suspect, many others across the country) there are pieces of artwork made up of four smaller paintings arranged in a cube. Back in June of this year (2008) I noticed that one of them was not completely screwed to the wall, so during a slow period I pulled the bottom left hand picture off the wall, rotated it 90 degrees, and reattached it. You can see my handiwork in the photo below.
Notice in the bottom left hand quadrant how the coffee pot is now lying on its side. You should also note that these pictures face the front window; everybody who enters the store and/or orders coffee can plainly see them.
My question was, how long would it take before an employee noticed it and rotated the picture back? A few minutes? A few hours? A few days? Surely not an entire week, right?
Try six months.
For the past six months, the picture has remained rotated. Someone must’ve finally figured it out last week. When we stopped by for our weekly coffee last week the picture had been rotated back 90 degrees, over six months after my original prank.
Harmless fun, nothing more. I’d like to think of more pranks like this in the future.