Category Archives: street

Obey Levi’s

Perhaps Maynard James Keenan would have would take issue with me, but if there was any doubt that Shepard Fairey has sold out, Levi’s hired Fairey to develop a clothing line, complete with a paste up at Times Square, should remove all doubt. The art? Obey Giant in the shape of a jeans pocket, and previously work (“Stay Up Girl” 2004 (Plate 196 in “Supply and Demand”, “Obey Factory” 2000 (Plate 201 ibid), and two others) defaced with Levi’s Giant and Levi’s new slogan, “Go Forth.”

Granted the guy has to pay the bills, and he’s done commercial work before, but there seems like a line is crossed when you’re repurposing your own work for a marketing campaign, especially when your art is has a very strong anti-conformity, anti-establisment, anti-commerical bent to it. Then to top it off, you write:

One of my main concepts with the [“This is Your God” show in 2003 at the Six Space Gallery in Los Angeles] (and the campaign as a whole) was that obedience is the most valuable currency. People rarely consider how much power they sacrifice by blindly following a self-serving corporation’s marketing agenda, and how their spending habits reflect the direction i which they choose to transfer power.

At least the irony of the situation isn’t lost on one of us.

Living Light

Taking a commission from Seoul’s City Gallery Project, The Living created Living Light, a vaguely forest-like structure that features a map of Seoul across the canopy. Each of the 27 panels in the canopy represents a particular neighborhood in the city. At night, each panel is illuminated based on air quality data as measured by various sensors throughout the city. Every 15 minutes, the panels turn on in the order of best quality to the worst.

Chemical Warfare Project, Phase 1

Eric Pakurar, took a photo every day of the same Greene St doorway in Manhattan for eight months straight, recording how the graffiti changed as part of his Chemical Warfare Project.

He is currently soliciting the identities of the individual artists, the individual pieces on Flickr.

Via Wooster Collective

Guerrilla Public Service

After the Camden council in London removed all the park benches because bums were sleeping on them, self proclaimed anarchists, The Space Hijackers, wearing bright yellow vests installed new ones in broad daylight.

This story reminds of LA artist, Richard Ankrom, creating his own perfect facsimile Caltrans sign to label an exit to I-5 back in 2001. The sign is still there; hanging on gantry 23100, on the northbound state route 110, just before the 3rd St. overpass.

More Building Projections

sf mint projection

The previous post got me trudging through my big file of clippings, and where I found this video of Obscura Digital‘s demo of their software for coordinating 7 HD projectors down at Mint Plaza.

Sure, it’s essentially an ad, but it is pretty cool.

Annoying previewless video after the jump.
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How It Would Be, If a House was Dreaming

Back in May, Urbanscreen, and Rossa & Rossa presented the video installation, “How It Would Be, If a House was Dreaming” at the Galerie der Gegenwart (Gallery of Contemporary Art).

This isn’t Urbanscreen’s first project, nor their first projection on the Galerie der Gegenwart, but it is their most popular to date.

On a technical note, Urbanscreen uses the free MXWendler software.

Makes me long for 01SJ, or I guess really ISEA, since 01SJ just wasn’t the same last year.

Watermarks


Last February Chris Bodle Watermarks Project was a series of projections throughout Bristol, England that illustrated high-tide water levels if the Greenland ice shelf would melt.

I really like BLDGBLOG thoughts about this project. How idea of projecting a different geography over the current geography. A kind of public augmented reality.

I would love for something like Watermarks to change people’s attitudes and motivate the radical changes that are needed, but it won’t. We’re doomed, by our own hubris.