They came to us with the hardest part already done. Tommy and the team had spent a day building a tabletop still life and photographing it: a torn baguette, a halved apple, plums, a corkscrew, a ball of foil, an open magazine, and a letterpress invitation sitting on a silver tray. The photograph is an homage to Josef Koudelka, though the site never announces it. Many of the objects on the table are references as well.
We explored five directions, each telling the story with the photograph, keeping it simple. We decided on the direction that cut right to the chase—no navigation, no scrolling, no delays. The site opens on a close-up of the hang tag, moves to the invitation to direct the eyes, then pulls back and stays there.
Then there’s the easter eggs, Tommy’s idea from the first. The magazine on the table is an issue of Artforum, open to the 1981 essay widely credited with launching Basquiat’s career… so now, if you find the magazine, you can read it. The halved apple opens a page from Koudelka’s own journal, a 1972 entry about a square full of starlings in Barcelona. You have to go looking.
Tommy also edited the sound. It runs a little over two minutes: a room, someone putting a record on (12XU by Wire, a song we used to cover in our band together back in high school), a siren arriving and passing, and then the room again. It sits far enough under everything that most people notice it only when it stops.
It’s one page. It took about a week. It was a fun project, and we suspect most people who visit will never find the apple.
Photography and sound by Arts Academy. Site by Needmore.