Ron English takes graffiti to new heights this morning by skywriting the word CLOUD five times across lower Manhattan. The text soon dissipates into… actual clouds.
Monthly Archives: September 2009
Smell Graffiti
While in Vienna earlier this month, I got the chance to get to know artist Mitchell Heinrich and his new “smell graffiti” project. What if instead of tagging a wall with paint, you tagged it with a scent? You could make a stinky subway platform smell like freshly cut grass. As an added bonus the scents are not permanent; they eventually evaporate leaving no trace.
Mitch explains:
Graffiti as a medium has remained largely unchanged since early humans were painting cave walls. The style and purpose has evolved over the centuries, but still nobody has successfully broken free of its visual nature. From this line of thinking smell graffiti has emerged. Harnessing modern chemistry and appropriating technology invented for industry I am working on a new way to make a statement in a public space.
Scent is interpreted by the limbic system which is very closely tied to emotion and memory. This leads me to believe that interacting with people using scent can potentially be a much more powerful medium than paint since people experiencing it can’t help but react to it. The goal of this project is to realize the potential of smell as art and to explore different ways of using it to interact with people.
Check on the step-by-step guide to creating your own smell graffiti cans at Instructables.
Cryptic Upcoming NY Event
I just received an interesting letter in the mail.
At first I thought it was a wedding invitation, but then I noticed there was no return address. After opening it, I realized it’s definitely an invitation but that’s about as much as I can figure out. It’s from someone named Selma for an NYC event on October 17th. I feel pretty confidant in stating I have never met anyone named Selma in my life.
I have a suspicion what this might be about but I’ll hold off until I get confirmation. (This isn’t the first cryptic invite sent to the Urban Prankster offices!) I’ve transcribed the copy below.
7pm
October 17th
New York City
The Cardinal Case
Secrets stole I, treasures too;
I invite you to pursue.
How to win my worthy gifts?
I am one of many shifts.
This Hermaea worth shall prove
And the chaff from wheat remove.
Will you my fond pageant see
And earn this purloined property?
Place to place, we’ll celebrate.
Kindly, gentles, save the date.
~Selma
New Improv Everywhere: Subway Yearbook Photos
A brand new Improv Everywhere mission hit the interwebz today:
For our latest mission, we installed a photography studio on a random subway car. We claimed that the MTA had hired us to take photos of every single person who rides the subway and that we’d be producing a yearbook at the end of the year. Most people were happy to pose for us, and the resulting photos show just how diverse New York subway riders can be.
Fake NY Post on Streets of NY Today
The Yes Men strike again in this sequel to last November’s Fake New York Times. This time although the paper is a fake, the facts in the paper are real. The action is designed to draw attention to climate change as world leaders meet today at the UN.
Read the Fake NY Post online.
Great Dome Rick Roll
Those crazy MIT hackers have struck again with a new hack on the Great Dome. This time the pranksters attached the first seven notes of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” essentially Rick Rolling all of Cambridge.
Of course there is a rich history of “hacking” at MIT and you can read about all the old classics at hacks.mit.edu. The Great Dome is a popular target– the R2D2 and police car hacks are among my favorites from the past.
There’s a great book documenting all of the best MIT hacks (which by the way is the campus term for pranks).
Park(ing) Day 2009
Today is Park(ing) Day 2009. Groups around the world will turn parking spaces into temporary public parks.
San Francisco art collective REBAR first created “PARK(ing)” in 2005 to re-imagine the potential of the metered parking space. In 2006, in collaboration with TPL, REBAR founded “PARK(ing) Day”: a global exploration of the creative potential of streets.
Here’s a video from Park(ing) Day NYC 2006:
Last year I had a delightful time relaxing in a park on 6th Avenue and 24th Street. If you find a parking space park today in your town, let us know in the comments.
No Longer Empty
Thanks to the real estate bubble bursting and the ensuing recession, there are tons of vacant retail spaces all around Manhattan. What to do with all this prime space? One solution is to cover it with illegal advertising.
No Longer Empty has a much more elegant solution. The group is working with landlords to turn vacant storefronts into temporary art galleries that are free and open to the public. They currently have a gallery in the ground level of the new Caledonia luxury hotel on 16th Street and 10th Avenue by the High Line. I checked it out last week and it was awesome. What a novel idea! Using empty space for the public good!
Getting Spammed in Real Life
The Spanish group Left Hand Rotation decided to bring the spam problem to the real world. They made postcards with the SPAM logo and handed them out on the street and stuffed them in mailboxes around Madrid. Here’s a video:
Ghost Hole at the Putting Lot
The Putting Lot is the awesome new putt putt course built in an abandoned lot in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Their site explains:
Each hole is designed by a different team of artists and architects around themes of urban sustainability. Playing a round at the lot is an interactive experience, requiring golfers to step inside the artist’s visions and the ideas that have inspired them. Through the transformation of the lot, the construction of the holes, and a series of events held in the public area, we hope to provide a forum for discussing urban sustainability in a new context.
Ghost Hole, pictured above, is a hole created by artist Ben Roosevelt. Ben describes the hole:
To make my part of the course, the exact area of the vacant lot in Brooklyn where my hole would be built was photographed prior to any cleaning or building. Then the photographs were used to make an outdoor, high-traffic decal for the actual playing surface of the hole. A player could look down and see what was in the exact spot before building: trash, debris, rocks, etc.
Cool!