What would you do if you had 40 x foam blocks from the packaging of new HP hard-drives? Throw them away? That is one choice. That’s what people with no imagination, with no interest in staff moral and with no desire to make a difference to their stagnant surroundings might choose to do with these oddly-shaped leftovers.

About a week ago I began collecting the foam as new HD’s were rolled out across the office. A few staff in surrounding cubicles joined in the hilarity, we had a few good laughs, we introduced each other to our vivid imaginations … and we were dead-keen to make either a Santa-Claus or a Snowman. We had kebab-sticks to join blocks together, a block of transparent sticky-tape for certain components and a free desk. Someone even said they’d obtain Santa’s red-jacket! I had an idea for a plastic carrot I’d seen in a cheap-shop if we made a Snowman. Either way, it was going to look funny and fantastic!

I love people with imagination. I like people who see art in the most mundane, who make art out of stationery, who want to wrap islands in plastic and cubicles in aluminum-foil, or like the idea of sticking a million HB STAEDTLER lead pencils all over the Adelaide Festival Centre.

Art is whatever you make it. Art simply is.

What’s more amusing is watching people who normally spend their time crunching numbers suddenly crunching foam blocks, or people who normally pore over legislative text to find hidden message like a theologian looking for purpose and place in the cosmos suddenly design and build a Xmas tree from foam blocks. When one can convince these people there iss more to life than their cubicle-based jobs, you know Art is good for the body, mind and soul.

If it weren’t for the fact that these foam pieces were sitting in full-view of passerby’s, we’d have built it. If it weren’t for someone’s standards on what is and is not ‘appropriate‘, we’d still have the foam pieces. Unfortunately, we suddenly had two bins filled with broken foam.

After the blocks were gone, the broken parts cleaned away, the desks to returned to their mundane normality, I suddenly saw a vision of how to build an Xmas tree from them. It was all crystal-clear in my head, a simple design that relied on geometric hexagons. Alas, it would never be.

Thankfully I have my imagination. It allows me to wonder what’s beyond these cubicle walls, wander a’field without leaving these walls, and have an active life outside of work. Where did your imagination take you today?

Foam Jokes

How do you turn junk into art? Show it to bored staff.

How do turn art into junk? Show it to management.

How do you turn this situation into a funny joke?

When anyone asks what happened to the art, tell them

… management thought it was junk.
… finance couldn’t see the financial gain.
… marketing wanted to see the sales-figures.
… the sales team wanted to know if it could be marketed.
… the analysis group wanted to see a breakdown of the figures.
… the secretary pool wanted their brains back.
… the call centre had to be mentioned in this list.
… the social committee were still deciding who would chair the group that would build the Santa out of polystyrene blocks that were previously packaging inside hard-drive boxes.

Amusingly, my final comment for the whole foam-covered saga: “And yet the world keeps on turning.“