“Café Mirage” is an interactive outdoor sculpture operating as a coffee vending machine that accepts metal bottle caps instead of coins. Here, bottle caps function as an alternative currency, collected through festival game tasks as well as by finding them hidden in other locations.
The work proposes a temporary shift in the rules of everyday exchange, inviting viewers to reconsider established notions of value and transaction while immersing themselves in a playful experience. Objects commonly regarded as worthless become a means of obtaining something that carries clear social, economic, and ritual value within contemporary urban culture. In this way, the project points to the instability of value itself, suggesting that it emerges not from objects alone but from changing contexts, collective agreements, and shifting environments.
The title “Café Mirage” refers to a phenomenon encountered while travelling, wandering, or drifting through different spaces. It also suggests a state of ambiguity, suspended somewhere between reality and imagination.