I worked with my wife, Andrea Buckvold, to create a giant 4-way dinosaur hopscotch board made of chalk drawings of dinosaur footprints. People chose one of four dinosaur ichnospecies (Caririchnium, Nodosaurid, Grallator, Eubrontes) and hopped their way across the board using only that dinosaur’s footprints. Many invented their own way of playing the game, racing against each other or against the clock. Free dinosaur-themed prizes were given away to all participants.
Andrea and I originally created the drawing for a performance festival in Millennium Park in Chicago, then recreated it for my solo show at the Museum of the Earth.
The idea was to see if, and how, people would adapt their own walking styles based on the perceived walking styles of the original dinosaurs. This is a much more free-form experiment than many of the survey-based projects, and was not so much intended to produce exact results so much as provide a general sense of awareness and understanding on the parts of both the artists and the audience. It is also much more sensory/physical, intended to create an experience rather than factual knowledge.
My later project Walk the Walk followed up on some of the same themes.
Chicago version:
Museum of the Earth version:
Chris Wildrick 