An Ordinary Building

Here’s an awesome project from 2006 we just stumbled upon, An Ordinary Building.

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On the night of September the 20th 2006 a sign appeared on a building in the center of Viterbo, an ancient city in central Italy, not far from Rome. Apparently put by the City Council it has already caused quite a stir. The sign is in fact an art piece by controversial artist duo Eva and Franco Mattes (aka 0100101110101101.ORG). Looking as official as any other street sign, it reads:

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Hundreds of unaware passersby have been staring at the sign: “It’s brilliant!” comments an elderly woman “But I have no idea how to interpret it.” While an outraged citizen living nearby comments, “This is just unacceptable, look around, there are buildings much worse than this one, especially in the suburbs.”

When asked to give an explanation of the sign, Franco Mattes, currently in New York, declared «It means what it says».

The artists behind this project Eva and Franco Mattes are hosting a conference in Barcelona next month that will feature talks from Improv Everywhere, Blu, Swoon, and Survival Research Laboratories, among others.

Parking Garage Tennis

Artist Jorge Mañes turned a parking deck into a tennis court as part of a project for the Royal College of Art in London.

“Park, Set and Match” is Jorge’s misreading of London’s supermarket parking systems, transforming them into his own tennis tournament. These huge spaces, legally private property, are monitored by CCTV cameras and security guards, and offered for free to the clients to make shopping easier. To get into the game you need only buy some water and fruit. This will allow you to legally occupy the parking space for 2 hours. You can then set up your tennis match, which will be “televised” by the CCTV cameras, a public source recording allowing players to obtain a copy of their match through the Creative Commons Act.

(thanks Jake!)

PosterBoy Update

Friends We Love posted an interview of New York’s most prolific subway street artist, PosterBoy:

Here’s a video of PosterBoy in action:


Poster Boy In Action from ANIMALmagazine on Vimeo.

And finally a video of PosterBoy taking down an entire billboard that he declares in the video description to be “a sign of what’s to come”:

(video shot by the Public Ad Campaign)