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After a long night discussion at Shakey's Pizza, Christina and Z had concluded that the best option to take a silly idea out of their heads was to act on it...
A penny: 1/100 of a dollar. It's the atom that makes up the molecule known as the U.S. dollar; and, unless you are a scientist, the atom means very little to anyone. It's often overlooked for what they represent: the means to an end. Everyone cares more about the end than the means. And so, the penny is often considered irrelevant all over the United States of America--unless you are a frugal individual, a scientist, of course.
On the surface of a penny, President Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, is portrayed in profile. It's an artistic interpretation of the most popular president of the United States of America (http://tinyurl.com/3jqr3z), and in the same way our surface project is our artistic representation: Christina will collected the pennies and turn them into art pieces.
She will keep you up-to-date on her current art project on her twitter blog (@findapenny) or through the Progress page in our menu.
On the opposite side of the modern penny, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. is featured. What many people don't realize is, if you look closely, you can see the silhouette of the Lincoln statue inside of the Lincoln Memorial.
In that respect, our project will also have a secretive, ulterior motive: it will attempt to prove to the world that, behind it's external hard representation, the internet can group people together to make something (an end) out of the smallest donations (the means). That is, if given the possibility to group together for something positive, like art, the internet population can motivate itself (due to altruistic, novel, passive, or forced reasons) to join in becoming a contributor. The internet population just needs to be given a chance. A chance to prove itself beyond the worlds fear mongering expectation.
Z will, therefore, collect information from people who have donated a single penny (or more if they wish), and compile a list that will be presented in our Acknowledgement Page and on his twitter blog (@sendapenny) to show the world that one person, one penny can contribute to something larger.
The goal in collecting these pennies will be to assist in helping Christina and Mr. Z pay for their absurdly high college loans. Christina and I felt that you, the donator, should not be lied to when it comes to the ultimate purpose of this project. We, therefore, promise each donator that we will not use any of the donated money until we finish all of our art and social experiments. Thank you for your donations and time.
-J. "Z" Aguirre
