Keep hopes up (textual street art)

More brilliant street art enjoyed today while sitting at home...

• An artist called TRUE replaced some NYC subway security signs with some of his own with less mundane advice: Riding with despair prohibitrd, Have fun, Do not hurt people, Do not accept defeat, Strive to be happy, Do not hold grudges
  
  • The stickers scanned: http://www.candychang.com/2008/04/04/riding-with-despair-prohibited/
    
  • A recreation of one of the stickers: http://glass.typepad.com/journal/2007/06/making_happy.html
  • A nice TED Talk by Stefan Sagmeister that mentions this an other interesting projects: Yes, design can make you happy
    
• Ji Lee's Bubble Project: 50,000 bubble stickers have been printed. They have been continually placed on top of ads on the streets of New York. They are left blank, inviting passersby to fill them in. I photograph and archive the results. This project instantly transforms the intrusive and dull corporate monologues into a public dialogue. Our public spaces are returned back to the public.
  The project is also mentioned in Sagmeister's talk, and watching/reading some of the pictures in the project's site is well worth.
  
  
• Sidewalk Psychiatry, by Candy Chang
  
  
  

Beasts walking in the beach

Flickr picture by pmo

BMW has been showing a beautiful commercial featuring the kinetic sculptures by Theo Jansen. This is its one minute version:

The art of creating creatures, a talk by Jansen, has been recently posted to ted.com. But, if you are curious about some of the fascinating technicalities behind Jansen's air-powered logic and mechanical design through genetic algorithms, an earlier talk at http://www.gelconference.com is a better choice (20 minutes):

Look up and marvel!

The Cloud Appreciation Society Manifiesto:

WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

We think that they are Nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it.
Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.

We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those of a person’s countenance.

Clouds are so commonplace that their beauty is often overlooked.
They are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul.
Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save on psychoanalysis bills.

And so we say to all who’ll listen:
Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!

via the tips in neave.com:

Turn the computer off and read something new. Sit on a park bench and gawp aimlessly at the clouds or stars above you. Smile like an idiot. Count your blessings. Don't worry about the future. Don't think too much. Don't take life too seriously. Don't pay attention to a word I say.

Besides these good tips, neave.com features some great Flash apps worth checking.

Mockingbird Molotov cocktails

I'm not much into poetry, but Rives seems to be monopolizing most of my rainy Sunday morning. Using June Cohen's words, "on the surface, it's light-hearted, but then he layers in unexpected depth and emotion".

Some cool things would happen if Rives controlled the internet, although I wish there were a transcript because he pushes my English skills a bit too far.


Mockingbird, including a TED 2006 remix that is not available in this text version, creates vivid surprising and pretty images on me.

But, my favourite, by far, is Compliment, in text and in beatboxer+poet+harmonica video. Mmmm, wait Xavier, that's dangerous stuff to listen to when you are happily and safely uninterested in that kind of love; so lets use a quote by George Bernand Shaw that I heard in Helen Fisher's TEDtalk The science of love, and the future of women:

Love consists in overestimating the differences between one woman and another