Hand from Above was a project installed on the BBC Big Screen in Liverpool by Chris O’Shea as part of the AND Festival.
He writes:
Hand From Above encourages us to question our normal routine when we often find ourselves rushing from one destination to another. Inspired by Land of the Giants and Goliath, we are reminded of mythical stories by mischievously unleashing a giant hand from the BBC Big Screen. Passers by will be playfully transformed. What if humans weren’t on top of the food chain?
Unsuspecting pedestrians will be tickled, stretched, flicked or removed entirely in real-time by a giant deity.
When the notorious Westboro Baptist Church traveled to San Francisco to protest outside of Twitter headquarters, some local pranksters showed up with ridiculously hilarious signs to counter them.
Are you stressed out and feeling the need to break something? Just pop a few coins in the Anger Release Machine and choose a porcelain item to smash. This clever “venting machine” is the work of Berlin-based artists Katja Kublitz and Ronnie Yarisal.
For our latest mission, a 13-member handbell choir provided some unexpected accompaniment for a Salvation Army bell ringer on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. Enjoy the video first and then go behind the scenes with our report below.
Danish designer Sebastian Campion recently brought his Urban Cursor project to the Ingràvid Festival in Figueres, Spain. Passersby moved the cursor, which was mounted on wheels and outfitted with GPS, around the city center. The cursor’s movements were tracked on Google Maps. According to Campion, the object of the project is “to facilitate social interaction and play in public space.”
Austrian artist Willi Dorner recently brought his “Bodies in Urban Spaces” project (which we’ve blogged about before) to London as a part of the annual Dance Umbrella festival. Dorner’s troupe of 20 performers led their audience on a “body sculpture trail” around London, and interacted with urban spaces along the route.
Heads up! If you’re in New York any time between now and October 31, take a stroll down 14th Street to find a treasure trove of public art projects. Art in Odd Places is back again this year with some really cool projects. Among the many things you’ll see are messages written in ash on the sidewalk, free money hiding nooks and crannies, twitter streams projected onto water fountains at night, and of course, a strange person in a knit bodysuit!
We think this project by Toronto street artist Posterchild is pretty damn clever. He’s taken the empty flyer boxes littering the city streets and turned them into planters.
Posterchild explains:
I’ve always been amazed by the state of most flyerboxes. More often that not, they are empty. Some haven’t been filled in years. Yet, there they are: everywhere in the city- at every intersection. Taking up valuable sidewalk space. Some are supposed to offer free news and culture print publications that make revenue from ads, some are supposed to offer free junk-mail type publications, with the expectation that someone will stop and take one completely beyond me. A rare few are supposed to offer a free publication of a certain political or religious leaning- probably bankrolled by whatever church or group can finance the publication of that message. For whatever reason, a great many of them offer nothing but an empty box.
But that offers a great opportunity for some people!
Graffiti artists love them as a platform for their stickers and tags. People with trash but nowhere to put it love them as a makeshift receptacle for garbage.
I tried to think of better ways than “Garbage Can” to re-imagine the interior spaces of these flyerboxes- better ways to make use of the whole box- not just the exterior walls.
This is what I came up with. I think it’s pretty great, if I do say so myself. The boxes makes a perfect platform for planters- and with them you can guerrilla garden almost anywhere in the inhospitable concrete city! Best of all, it leaves the sides open for writers and artists.
…and with this “impending collapse of print media”? You may just see these appearing in old, abandoned Newspaper boxes.
Urban Prankster covers pranks, hacks, participatory art, flash mobs, 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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