Zoomdoggle is a website (or blagazine, as it’s creator, Jack Bronstein bills is) devoted to the most noble pursuits of having fun and getting others to have fun. Recently, Zoomdoggle has broken free of it’s InterWebly bounds and is wandering the streets of New York incarnated as the Fun-o-Meter, a vending machine that sells fun ideas for 50 cents! In addition to a fun idea, you also get a toy, a lucky penny, and a quarter because Jack wanted to sell his ideas for 25 cents, but only had a 50 cent machine.

Hey Jack! I’ve got a 25 cent machine I swap you! Our first vendor was a 25 cent one that the dealer sent us by mistake. We tried to make a go of it at that price, but the cost of our contents is too high, and it was killing us!

Jack’s been walking his Fun-o-meter around town and trying it in different locations to see how people react to it. You can read the whole story here.

I’m enchanted with this idea, of course! This is creativity encapsulated in its purest form. In addition to being the first artists to incorporate vending machines into art, the Fluxus artists also created scores. Instead of a fixed piece of art, you’d get a score, an instruction or set of instructions, the performance of which was the artwork. Thus, the line between artist and audience was obliterated. Everyone could be an artist. Everyone could be art. At the same time, the difference between making art and playing games also broke down. As well it should! Zoomdoggle’s fun ideas remind me very much of Flux scores, with instructions like, “Tag someone without warning and run. Now they're it.”


Thanks, Zoomdoggle, for making the world a more fun place!