Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Project Time, Peter Lurch, and new track from Moby

So I've come up with a few guerilla art projects...
  • First, an urban version of the retro-arcade game Snake. This involves a couple people walking around with backpacks full of "packets of information" that are periodically left behind every 15-20 feet. Additionally the agents will use the city grid as if it were the limited gaming grid. The packets would be left behind randomly on the gaming grid, and be composed of biodegradable material. Perhaps joke messages on organic banana peels or something like that explaining what is going on. Further passers by or other agents can join one of the snakes once it has reached a traffic intersection for maximal publicity. The area around and across the bridges downtown would be ideal.
  • Free alcohol signs placed all over Sixth Street, definitely eyebrow raising. The team would need to place them up quickly advertising a particular bar that is having a "promotion to drive up sales". The catch is the bar's name and logo appears similar to one that already exists on the street. Drunkards with low intelligence will be drawn to the one that sounds like the one on the poster. The staff of that bar will be at confusion as to how to stop people asking about the free beer and will have no choice but to answer the same annoying and repetitive questions. Most likely it will be the bartenders that figure out the group think that is going on and they will challenge their beliefs upon how a consumer's decision-making skills are influenced.
  • My last idea has been in the works for a while. We all know that for-profit media is sucking the soul out of our humanity by denying an accurate (and checkable) representation of the truth, and setting off a high-altitude EMP over certain regions of the planet is not a feasible option to get drone-thinkers to "wake up" from their "sleep" (I.E. killing televisions, radio broadcasts). A mouthfull, I know. Localized action is necessary, and can be done in a creative and non-destructive format. Ever notice how more and more social gathering places, especially bars, have more and larger flat-screen televisions around? What if we could turn all those off when a bar is really crowded? Ex: That poor bloke that was pulled to a bar to hang-out with his girlfriend's friends would no longer have the sports network to distract him during moments of boring gossip. He'll thus be thinking more and more about why he's there and if the dull suffering is "worth it". Let's have several agents with universal remote controls, simultaneously turn off all the televisions at the same time at one of these bars. Simple idea, a video of all the reactions (or more surprising, the non-reactions) given by the confused 'sumer-heads can get the message across. Possibly a lead-agent reveals themself from the crowd displaying a an anti-television t-shirt, some shirt that has a working television screen on it showing something interesting like a lion attacking a water buffalo, or an collapsable stereo playing Radiohead's "All I Need".
Yea, the last one's a bit wacko, but it takes a step further than most Improv-Everywhere stunts done so far. Universal remotes are big and clunky but you can check out a smaller device ala TV B GONE. Great fun for artists/pranksters/anarchists alike! The distance on 'em is about 25-30 feet when I tried it out and the ability to control your reality is priceless.




Before I get tired, here's some fantastic work by Danish photographer Peter Funch. It really challenges the notion of the constructs of space and time. All images were photoshopped together but were taken in the same location at different times for the right actors to appear.

I also included the track "Shot in the Back of the Head" by Moby. The new album drops June 30, I'm hoping it's going to snake around stronger than his last one. We're definitely seeing a turn towards the Play record, but we'll have to wait til the art is out there.

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