I’m not making this up. Artist Aray Saroyan Armstrong, a student at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Milan, Italy, has completed his thesis project: Pooptopia LBS: Mobile Poop Awareness & Avoidance System. It’s an urban location-based game of pet waste removal.
As described by Regine Batty on the must-read blog We Make Money Not Art, “The goal […] is to discover dog poo, make a picture of it and email it, with the location of the finding and your name or the name of your team. The claim will earn you points. You can earn double points if you also mark the exact location of your discovery on Pooptopia’s Tesoro Scuro [‘Dark Treasure’] Map. This ‘treasure map’ is used to create nightly pick-up routes for the Pootectors, Pooptopia’s pet waste removal squad. Over time this data helps define zones as ‘Pooptopias’ and ‘Puptopias,’ which affects the cost of dog ownership and rewards responsible canine-loving communities: the poorer the rating, the higher the service fee.”
From Armstrong’s thesis blog: “Pooptopia LBS is much more than a super smart, fun and high-tech poop scooping service. It’s a lifestyle. We serve the people, not just wealthy dog owners. We encourage good citizenship and are helping people to reclaim their streets in a playful and positive way.”
