SUMMER 2007, CALIFORNIA: Mobile units roaming public space in Santa Barbara collect and display anonymous regrets from the public to comprise a sociological database of time- & site-specific sentiment in the community. REGRETS Santa Barbara is an interactive archive, a public artwork, and a study of communally shared but typically private recollections.

private
Instant feedback to the individual user based on other locals' similar concerns is algorithmically generated and calculated to 'share the burden'. A wireless connection queries a central database located on a remote server. Using keywords from the submitted text and other self-describing user input to define similarity, the server returns to the user the five most similar of others' regrets. An incongruous element to some of the returns lends a thought-provoking, poetic character to the user feedback.

public
Through existing signage, text, network, and broadcast facilities, random selections and groupings of regrets sampled from the archive are made public across the city. Locals encounter fellow citizens' most personal misgivings in the spaces usually occupied by communal information, advertising, publicity, & entertainment. By engaging local users in revelations of a problematic but potentially constructive nature, REGRETS Santa Barbara aims to bring specificities of individual lives, in this case personal regrets, into the realm of public debate, shared learning, and community. In particular, remorse is seen here as a positive entity, incorporating recall, reflection, error correction and learning. Far from retrograde, remorse promises change for the better...