Mitgenommen is a series of interactive public installation pieces designed to be played with, vandalized, destroyed, and stolen. It was installed in a corner of the Breddergarten park in Witten, Germany. Mitgenommen was built out of recycled wood, hacked consumer electronics, and custom hardware by the Better Wetter team, which consisted of myself, Caro Blaim Elia Tomat, Eszter Némethi, George Sinclair, Kaho Abe, Lilli Unger, Martin Kroll, Mascha Fehse, Sandra Panzer, and Tom Clowney. It was completed as part of 72 Hour Urban Action.
The location in the park we were assigned proved to be a dark, sketchy corner frequented by high school students after dark. We understood that anything we introduced into their space would be interacted with on their own terms, and probably eventually vandalzied. To celebrate and merge with this energy, the Mitgenommen boxes are all interactive in one way or another, but do not perscribe any kind of particular game. Some vibrate when their button is pressed, some act as walkie talkies, and some act as flash lights. They are light and can be rearranged into arbitrary patterns as well.
The morning after installing, we noticed that they had been rearranged into the shape of a robot and that one of them had been set on fire. The next morning, a few were missing, and more had been torched or kicked in. We have no way of knowing where they are at this point.