Becky Stern produced this video for Craftzine, sister site to Make Magazine. It’s a nice instructional video on how to create your own linoleum asphalt mosaics.
They explain:
Linoleum asphalt mosaics, also called Toynbee Tiles, are artworks permanently embedded in pavement. In this video I’ll show you how to construct your own from inexpensive materials. You can get real linoleum (don’t use vinyl flooring) for this project by ordering free samples online. By cutting out a mosaic design in the linoleum and sandwiching it between layers of paper, wood glue, and asphalt crack filler, you can affix the mosaic very permanently to an asphalt surface, such as your driveway. You may choose to use a heat gun to make the linoleum easier to cut, or even a laser cutter. The earliest examples of these tiles were found in the 70s and 80s on streets in Philadelphia, all bearing the same (or very similar) message: “Toynbee idea / in Kubrick’s 2001 / resurrect dead / on planet Jupiter.” They are speculated to have been created by the same person until they began to gain a following.
Prankster Rob Cockerham recently spray-painted a bunch of stuffed animals brown and left them for dead on the sides of roads around Sacramento. Why? Because he’s hilarious. See his documentation.
Artist Stuart Semple released over 2,000 “happy clouds” recently in London. The clouds were made from a mixture of soap, helium, and vegetable dye. They lasted for about 30 minutes before dissolving into the air.
In September 2004, Mexican artist Miguel Calderón secretly placed a TV set in a bar in Sao Paulo (Brazil). At a certain moment, an unannounced soccer match showed up in the screen. Mexico was playing against Brazil. Bar customers, who had no idea about the match, thought that somehow they missed the news. People started watching the match. Brazil lost 17-0.
It was all staged. Calderón had carefully re-edited various past games between both teams in order to create something completely impossible. The piece was shown as part of the Sao Paulo Art Biennal.
Make sure you read the instructions carefully next time you’re about to press the button at a crosswalk. Total Crisis Panic Button was installed all over Los Angeles by Jason Eppink. That project inspired the second two, put up by Ryan Laughlin in New Haven, CT.
Aakash Nihalani is a Brooklyn based artist who works with the medium of tape in public places around New York.
He explains:
My work is created in a reaction to what we readily encounter in our lives, sidewalks and doorways, building and bricks. I’m just connecting the dots differently to make my own picture. Others need to see that they can create too, connecting their own dots, in their own places.
Here’s the deal: There’s a company called National Public Advertising Outdoor that puts up advertisements on sides of buildings and other public places in New York and other big cities. The ads they put up are illegal. They do not have a permit. They city is not getting paid. Instead, they pay the landlords of the buildings they use. Citizens are forced to look at advertising all over NYC because this company has illegally plastered their ads all over town. For whatever reason, the city looks the other way and rarely cracks down on them.
This spring, Jordan from The Public Ad Campaign blog organized a massive grassroots retaliation against the illegal billboards. See our coverage here and here. In short, an army of artists whitewashed 120 different illegal billboards and replaced them with art. NPA Outdoor was furious and sent out teams to put their ads back up in a matter of hours. A few artists even got arrested after being caught in the act by police.
Since the takeover, NPA Outdoor has added a new notice to all of their billboard sites. As you can see in the photo above, it reads, “Coming soon to this location: a chance to win these posters and other prizes inside.” They are trying to find a loophole in their bullshit illegal business. It’s illegal for a landlord to put an advertisement on the side of his building, but it’s not illegal to put up a sign advertising products that are for sale inside. So by putting up this bullshit notice that claims you can win the posters inside the store, NPA is trying to get around the law. They’re smart to add the phrase “coming soon,” because if you go in ANY of the stores that have this notice, you’ll find that there are no posters. It’s all bullshit. I’ve personally asked people in a half-dozen stores for more information on “winning” the posters and every clerk has looked at me like I was an idiot. They had no idea what I was talking about, because there is no drawing for posters. It’s bullshit.
Recently Posterchild and Jason Eppink set out to call NPA Outdoor on their bullshit. The duo replaced NPA’s notice with one of their own.
Urban Prankster covers pranks, hacks, participatory art, and other creative endeavors that take place in public places in cities across the world. It is edited by Charlie Todd.
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