Start hunting for octopus, Minneapolis

An artist, William Hessian, has hidden 35 miniature artworks portraying the octopus in public parks around Minneapolis. Your job: find them! It's getting cold, too, so you might want to do it before the first snowfall.

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I sure hope he didn't incorporate any LEDs into the artworks...

Did he go to public parks to hide Art of Octopuses, or did he he hide Art of Octopuses in Public Parks?

The difference could be important!

Love this kind of stuff. Public art installations, not necessarily endorsed by the gvmt. (Dunno if this was or not)

"Illegal" public art installations, like a more artistic and less damaging form of graffiti, engaging the public etc. I've had some ideas like this in the works for a while now but they aren't progressing too far.

These kinds of things are starting up everywhere, sort of like an urban folk art.

@ craig (#5)

Sorry, I have to pop in and correct you here.
Graffiti is a painting style/technique which is generally done on a rough medium using aerosol paints. It is not actually related to vandalism.

People regularly equate vandalism and graffiti, but they are *not* the same. Much the same way that pointless tagging and the like is also not graffiti, and treating them as though they are alike just further demonizes a very interesting form of art. (Some graffiti is vandalism, some vandalism is graffiti, but they only overlap, they are not the same.)

Sorry! This is a pet peeve of mine, and I thought I'd vent. :D

I wonder if there is one in tiny Jackson Park which is two blocks from where I grew up in NE Minneapolis? Or perhaps Loring Park where us gays have our Gay Pride Festival every year? Hmmmm. So many parks; so little time or desire to look. If only there was a prize involved...

For all you out of towners who want some free art, here is a link to the Minneapolis Park Board's map of my home town's parks. The green bits are the parks.

http://www.minneapolisparks.org/forms/parks/parkMap.pdf

Happy hunting to one and all.

Cthulhu must be proud.

Art, octopus, and public participation, just overall a very very cool idea. I applaud the person who came up with it.

The article says,

William says, "At 2 p.m. on Friday 17th, 2008 10 to 20 very obscure photographs will be updated on the website.

I imagine that they meant to write 2009.

Never mind, that's just me reading "Friday" as "February"!

They're cute! Way better than the cow-like "moose" statues Toronto put up a few years ago.

Golly, it's already mid-October. Are you telling me the first snow hasn't fallen in Minnesota yet?

Global warming!
;-)

Maybe Banksy will switch from rats to squid...