Hacking the Highways 425
cindy writes "LA artist Richard Ankrom got fed up with the terrible signage on the Harbor Freeway. Rather than wait for CalTrans to do something about it, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He carefully made additional signage and added it to an existing freeway sign. The results were so good that no one, including CalTrans, noticed for months! The LA Times has an article including some of the video shot by the artist to document his "crime.""
Funny guy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Funny guy (Score:2, Funny)
Where is it a crime to impersonate a construction worker?
Ok, ok, other than a Village People concert?
Shades of Brazil (Score:2)
Hmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Funny)
You'd slow down traffic while they tried to read the damn sign
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
"60 km/h"
"no passing"
"exit only"
stack of signs on the highways
That is why it is art (Score:2)
Part performance, part painting, part film, it covers a lot.
Similar to MIT? (Score:5, Interesting)
To this day police officers record the spot of accidents in the same unit ("Ahh, yeah, we've got a fender bender at 24 quibs").
Can anyone more familiar with the area fill in my holes?
Re:Similar to MIT? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Similar to MIT? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Similar to MIT? OT (Score:2)
Smoots (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Similar to MIT? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Similar to MIT? (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps it is the "Smoot"-ing of the Harvard Bridge [mit.edu] you refer to? It's only off by 2 letters...
And yes, the local police do use the marks as references when writing accident reports.
You ought to read "If at all Possible, Involve a Cow." [mit.edu] -- it's about college pranks, and has nice sections on both MIT and Caltech. A nice afternoon's diversion, at least... motivation for one's own college prank career at the worst.
"Where There's A Willy, There's a Way. " (Score:4, Funny)
In 1988, a group of students pulled off the biggest prank at Rice. They rotated the 2,000 pound statue of William Marsh Rice 180 degrees, making Willy face Fondren Library for the first time in 58 years.
"We were sitting in the pub drinking beer, and we decided something had to be done," says John Q. Smith '86, who helped mastermind the operation. After two futile attempts, the pranksters decided the third time had to be the charm.
Three electrical engineers, two mechanical engineers, a civil engineer, a mathematical scientist, a biochemist, a chemist, a physicist and an English major put their brains and brawn together to carry out the elaborate scheme.
Using plans of the statue taken from Fondren Li-brary, they simulated the transfer load through a computer model. They built two 24- foot A-frames, which they painted black to blend with the night, and put a beam on top that supported a three ton hoist in the middle and two one ton hoists on the sides.
The A-frames were tested at an off-campus garage by lifting a 2,250-pound Toyota that was swung back and forth to simulate rotation. A pair of Houston police officers looked on after being told the car hoisting was "a senior research project. "
These same police officers stopped the students as they were hauling the A-frames back to campus. Convinced it was only a school project, the officers gave the students a police escort to Entrance 8.
Lookouts and decoys positioned themselves around the Quad and communicated to each other through walkie-talkies using code names from the X-Men comic book series. The light on Anderson Hall had been turned off every night for the two previous weeks. Each morning the pranksters reconnected the light so that physical plant people would not replace it.
In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Apri112, 1988, before the sun came up, Willy sat facing the library. Only one student was caught, Patrick Dyson '88, and was made to pay the cost of turning the statue to its rightful position.
Students rallied behind Dyson and sold T -shirts that read, "Where There's A Willy, There's a Way. " More than enough money was collected to pay the cost of restoring Willy to his familiar perspective.
What took the pranksters one hour and cost $400 to do took professional movers three hours and a rumored $1,500-$2,000 to remedy. The students were blamed for breaking a guide pin underneath the statue, but they claim the professional movers did that.
Reports of the prank quickly spread across the country with the help of the media.
"People are going to have a hard time beating this one," comments a contented Smith.
Well, maybe. But Rice students don't have excellent minds for nothing and they know quite well that a masterminded prank is a terrible thing to waste.
Re:"Where There's A Willy, There's a Way. " (Score:3)
graspee
No copycats please! (Score:3, Insightful)
It might be useful if he does get some sort of punishment (slap on the wrist maybe). The powers-that-be must show they have working teeth.
P.S. I have also heard of artist painting stamps on their envelopes just to show they can do it (it cost way more than the stamp price in both time and money).
P.P.P Does this qualify as an art-hack?
Re:No copycats please! (Score:4, Funny)
actually, now that you mention it, i heard on the news today that osama's most recent fatwa was to misdirect all americans on the highway.
greg "tired of hearing everything called a terrorist" clarke
Truth in labeling (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope you were trying to be sarcastic. That certainly doesn't describe the kind of world I aspire to live in.
As we have to deal with more and more complexity, one thing that can help is truth in labeling/signage/documentation so we can have justified confidence in things we encounter occasionally without needing to become experts in their every detail.
I for one do not want to trust "powers-that-be" to get their labeling/signage/documentation right every time to the finest detail
However it does seem to me to be a good idea for the content of signs et al to be open to public review, a concept that the Internet and an open ended program to devolve responsibilities for detail to a more local level can both help with.
Re:No copycats please! (Score:2)
Real Stamps have special strips on them that the stamp meter can see under IR, to make sure that it is a real stamp, and a full one. No matter how good the artistry, it still wouldn't pass.
Re:No copycats please! (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.artscope.net/VAREVIEWS/StampArt0201.ht
http://www.newcitychicago.com/chicago2/1102.html [newcitychicago.com]
http://hotwired.lycos.com/gallery/96/33/jpeg.f.ht
http://www.badpressbooks.com/mhdl.html [badpressbooks.com]
Re:No copycats please! (Score:2, Interesting)
Apparently the value as a work of art is actually higher than the face value. If you run across a Boggs bill, you definately want to look for an interested art collector. (or keep it in circulation, which is more fun)
Re:No copycats please! (Score:2)
This type of behaviour should be encouraged. More people should do volunteer work. Punishing this guy is like some of the unions at the schools up here that want to ban parents from volunteering at the schools because it "steals union jobs".
Re:No copycats please! (Score:2)
Oh no. Terrorists might redirect traffic. Dear god, no! That might cause traffic congestion. NO! Please!
Yeah, back at the terrorist ranch, I'm sure the terrorist who redirects highway traffic and causes gridlock and a few accidents will be heralded as Terrorist of the Month(tm).
Lighten up.
Re:No copycats please! (Score:3, Insightful)
Is "terrorists" the new "communists"? When do the witch hunts begin? Can anybody join?
And why is it that the USA doesn't give a rats arse about "terrorism" until it happens to them.
Terrorism is actively sponsored in the USA (Score:2, Informative)
Where do you think Al Qaeda got their funding before the Russians left Afghanistan?
Where do the guerillas in Nicaragua get their funding?
And so on...
Re:No copycats please! (Score:2)
Re:No copycats please! (Score:3, Funny)
P.P.P No, because it ain't art. My mom could have done that.
<absurdity>Personally, I think that the Point-to-Point Protocol is art, but I have weird definitions of art.
And if your mom really can write a better PPP implemenation, by all means encourage her to do so! It's all about the innovation.</absurdity>
Jeez, IBM missed a golden opportunity... (Score:4, Funny)
That's pretty funny.... (Score:2, Funny)
I don't get it.... (Score:5, Funny)
Does the fact that he was very careful in making this sign make it art? Can I lovingly craft a standard school issue room number placard and label an unlabled room in the name of art? The faceless school gestapo will never notice, and my sign may be seen by dozens of unwary students shuffling to and from class in that way they tend to. I'll be a hero. Take THAT, facilities and maintanance!
Re:I don't get it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If everyone had a constructive attitude like that, think what a society we'd have. People would automatically pick up trash, report suspicious behavior, finger dishonest colleagues or employers, and generally apply millions of little improvements to the status quo. Too bad most people are too selfish/alienated/cynical to care. It's inspiring to see someone who does care, and passionately, too.
Re:I don't get it.... (Score:2)
Imagine if he had been caught, say 3/4's the way through. Would the the highway patrol have recognized his excellent implementation and allowed him to proceed? Would CalTrans still give him a grudging if reluctant approval? Or would they have trashed his materials and thrown him in jail or fined him?
It's not sufficient for members of society to have a more constructive attitude, it's also necessary to have institutions that can appreciate that attitude, and even have a sense of humor.
I think that's part of the statement of this hack.
Re:I don't get it.... (Score:2)
Re:I don't get it.... (Score:2)
I'm in the wrong business.
Re:I don't get it.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The egg in the face aspect comes from the fact that nobody noticed the fact that the sign had been added. You'd think that the people in charge of the signs would notice that there was an addition that hadn't been authorized. Instead, Caltrans is apparently a big enough beaurocracy that nobody noticed the change, or if they did they assumed that somebody else had authorized it. Of course part of that is simply that he was right; there should have been a sign there all along, so people who saw it tended to view it as the bozos getting their act together rather than an obvious hack.
It seemed to work for Andy Warhol with the soup cans and other copies of ordinary household products. It may not be super-duper, ivory tower elite art, but it qualifies as art. FWIW, I've seen some of the guy's other artwork- the artists' colony where he lives has periodic open houses where anyone can come in and see the work of artists who want to show it off- and he does some interesting stuff. It isn't brilliant, but he's certainly a very competent artist.
Re:I don't get it.... (Score:3, Insightful)
How many signs do you think there are on the freeways in the Los Angeles area? Even assuming that there is only a single person in Caltrans that all sign requests go to, what are the chances that he drives that particular route frequently enough to notice a difference? And if he does drive the route that frequently, he probably wouldn't even notice, since I'm sure most people have their route memorized and don't even look at the signs anymore. And if he's just randomly tooling around LA when he sees the sign, unless he's Rain Man, there's little chance that he has EVERY sign memorized and therefore wouldn't notice. The people that might notice are the blue-collar guys that are out driving the highways every day, and they are very justified in assuming that someone else made the change. I agree with the original poster, I don't see how this is art. Funny and useful, yes. But art? I don't see it.
That's a neat stunt... (Score:4, Funny)
Then again, I'm sure something is really wacked at NCDOT. Else how do you explain the fact that the 440 beltway around Raleigh intersects with itself . Someone at NCDOT has a good supplier of (1) moonshine or (2) crack.
Re:That's a neat stunt... (Score:4, Funny)
you want to see screwwy highways, go to Montreal Canada. built in the 60's 3 lanes each direction, through town, elevated and no sholders. oh and very short on ramps and off ramps, leading to or from the slow lane, or fast lane with no consitency at all.
and for la piece de resistance, all the signs are in french.
Re:That's a neat stunt... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That's a neat stunt... (Score:4, Informative)
US Interstate numbers are 2 or 3 digits long.
Each digit has a specific meaning.
The third digit (ones) denotes direction. Even numbered interstates, (Example: 90, 86, etc) run east-west. Odd numbered interstates (Example: 95, 87) run north-south.
The second digit (tens) denotes where in the country it is located. Interstates are numbered South-North, and West-East. This being said, I-90 and I-87 run through NY. I-5 and I-10 run through California.
The first digit (hundreds) is a special extension for cities. Even digits are "bypass", and odd digits are "to". Examples: In Rochester, NY, I-390 runs from I-90 to the city, and I-490 runs around the city. In Buffalo, I-190 runs into the city, and 290 runs past the city.
Re:That's a neat stunt... (Score:4, Informative)
Two-digit interstate numbers ending in zero (theoretically) traverse the country from east coast to west coast, and those ending in five (theoretically) traverse the country from the northern border to the southern border. They don't all make it the whole way, but that was the original intent. The tens digit increases from west to east and south to north.
So, I-5 runs up the West Coast and I-95 runs up the East coast. I-10 runs along the southern border and I-90 runs along the northern border. Give or take...
That was *interesects* (Score:3, Informative)
Now, if you look at the interchange marker right above the words "Piney Points" and to the left of "Caraleigh", you will see where our beltline meets itself at a 90 degree angle. At this point, if you are going southwest on the beltline you literally have to take a right hand turn onto a one-lane clover-leaf to get back onto the interstate. If you don't, you find yourself passing through Apex
I've been here almost 2 years, and it took me a good 3 months to get used to that.
Re:That's a neat stunt... (Score:2)
If you're interested (Score:2)
It's nice being able to work downtown now since I don't have to do the Lynn Road Rat Race or the I-40 Crawl. Then again...now I do the Falls of the Neuse 500
Anyhow...time for a shower and off to work. See my site for an email address.
Re:That's a neat stunt... (Score:2)
Down on business-85 between greensboro, and highpoint, is absolutly insane, the on/off ramps are like... maybe 8 feet long... and the speed on the road is 55, so people do 80 on it.
If memory serves, in charlotte, they just say 77 north, when its really the exit for 77 north and south..
I just hope they finish i-40 in greensboro some day... they have been working on it for years...
Re:That's a neat stunt... (Score:2)
Re:That's a neat stunt... (Score:2)
Re:Here in Arizona (Score:2)
No offense, but who cares if there are any dot pattern changes or signs along the freeway to indicate this? It's horrible and unsafe road design, for the simple reason that it is not what people expect. On my drive to work on the interstate through Rochester, NY, I would actually have to start in the leftmost of three lanes if I wanted to stay in the same lane for the entire trip, because the two lanes to my right were "exit only" at some point, and were replaced on the left. So I would start in the left-most of 3 and end up in the right-most of 3, without ever changing lanes. This is really stupid. Most people expect to get in a lane and be able to drive in that lane, not have to play musical lanes just to stay on the highway.
Thanks for playing (Score:2)
Official Signs that you'd think would be jokes. (Score:4, Funny)
I75 - Exit 69 - Big Beaver Road.
Everytime I take that exit I think that SOMEONE in the DOT was pulling a similar stunt.
Re:Official Signs that you'd think would be jokes. (Score:2)
Re:Official Signs that you'd think would be jokes. (Score:3, Funny)
I am however sad that in Reading the Road To Nowhere is now the POW MIA Highway, then again, now it does go someplace so I guess a new name was needed.
Aviation: Instrument Approach Fixes Humor (Score:3, Funny)
On the ILS 18 approach into Lebanon NH, the fixes are named HAMMM, BURGER and FRYYS
Re:Official Signs that you'd think would be jokes. (Score:3, Funny)
Boring
Oregon City
Brilliant! (Score:5, Funny)
I have a grant for any artists who want to build an HOV lane as a project on the 10, 101, or 170 freeways.
I'll even supply the vests.
Re:Brilliant! (Score:2)
What ever you're offering, I'll double it. We need an overpass.
-
Caltrans strikes again (Score:2)
California highway signs really suck (Score:2, Offtopic)
If you drive on 4th Street from east of Freeway 5, driving westwards toward the freeway interchange, you first see (two arrows, one points up, the other points right):
^
|| Santa Ana
I-5
Los Angeles =>
where "Los Angeles" points to the entrance of North I-5 on the right hand side. And then after you pass that entrance continuing on 4th Street, crossing under the freeway bridge, you see the sign for the second entrance to South I-5 on the left hand side (the arrow points left):
= Los Angeles
\
SOUTH I-5
So there are two signs, pointing in opposite directions and contradicting each other, all showing the way to Los Angeles! But neither is right, because the way to Los Angeles is to go straight on 4th Street. From there you don't need to enter the freeway to go to Los Angeles downtown.) The error has been there for at least three years and no one is fixing it. No doubt people take matter into their own hands.
Re:California highway signs really suck (Score:2)
Interesting Picture of Hacking The Highways (Score:3, Funny)
More of this... (Score:5, Interesting)
The highlights aren't vandalism of the spray paint and broken windows variety, but vandalism of a more artistic or pointed sort that often leaves the target looking better than before.
The really destructive vandalism, alas, is usually bought and paid-for, and protected by the powers-that-be. One way to reclaim private advertising in public places is to Convert Billboards to Chalkboards [syntac.net]. This is one you can do in your spare time - hop to it!
The folks at Baby Smasher Industries [babysmasher.com] will sell you some amended "instructions for use" stickers that show how restroom baby-changing stations are really meant to be population control devices.
The folks at Fortean Times [forteantimes.com] have kept their fingers on the pulse of curious vandalism: Authorities in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, were called to the scene to investigate when fifteen trees in a city park were fitted with doorknobs and locks. Residents of a Rio de Janeiro slum painted all of the buildings in their neighborhood a uniform pale green, perhaps to confuse police.
In 1982, during the USSR-supported anti-Solidarity crackdown by the government in Poland, someone changed all of the signs at the “Stalingrad” metro station in Paris to read, instead, “Gdansk” (the city where the Solidarity movement was founded).
What would you do, given the inclination?
Re:More of this... (Score:2, Funny)
OT: Your sig (Score:2, Funny)
Pretty cool, but there's always a but (Score:4, Insightful)
While I think what this guy did was very neat, his statement above is exactly the reason WHY there are laws against things like this.
As much as the average 'Joe' would like to think they can make decisions for the rest of the world, sometimes there are some things that experts know more about. And yes, sometimes bureacracy gets in the way - but just imagine if we allowed your average person on the street to dictate how a tcp/ip stack should be implemented, or what have you.
"Not intentionally wrong" is all fine and dandy, but there are still thousands of laws on the books (some rightfully so) that will still get you (negligence laws come to mind). You don't have to MEAN to do harm for harm to be done.
Regardless, pretty cool stunt, and it's good that this sort of thing likely won't be repeated a million times over - I can't count the number of times I've heard "why do they put a stop sign here? there's really no need to stop at all!".
Re:Pretty cool, but there's always a but (Score:5, Insightful)
You have just described open-source software development.
Art pranks (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of them are funny, like the one where he finds a sign at a cafe explaining "How to put the lid on your coffee," (duh!) and changes it to a version which contains many sexual overtones that even fools the employees.
Culture Jamming! (Score:2)
As for the method explained in the article, this was about helping people by altering existing signage.
Culture jamming is usually about subverting whatever message is present into something else.
One example that may interest
http://mirrors.meepzorp.com/xpsucks/ [meepzorp.com]
quite amusing, and very cost effective! Let the corporations pay for the message, and use it against them!
http://www.adbusters.org/creativeresistance/jamga
sigh (Score:2)
Unfortunately for him he didnt really find a way to show off his art. Making a sign to exact caltrans specs isnt really art.
they should press charges... (Score:2)
Lets not forget he did not even attempt an effort to contact caltrans. I mean if it turned into a costly affair or they wouldn't listen and he was protesting the bureaucrasy(mangled that word) that would have a point. I've dealt with caltrans, and it wasn't all that hard to at least get my request heard.
could have been so much better (Score:2)
and when i found out, they treat it like its amazing this went undiscovered, as if cal trans is checking at all to make sure that every sign is exactly the ame every day.
wow, its like he snuck a car into a parking lot, and then im supposed to be amazed noone thought this was out of the ordinary.
now, if he had worked "laker fans ->" into the staples center sign, and noone caught it for a while, that would have been great. or maybe a political comment near the city hall offramp, a snide remark at hollywood in a applicable spot...but what he did is pretty unremarkable.
and seriously, maybe im not remembering the article correctly, but this took him 2 years to execute??
My Nefarious Sign Change (Score:2)
JOhn
we need more of this (Score:2)
Similarly, ramps around the country have signs that indicate direction of travel by using place names. So instead of "I-405 North / I-405 South" over the left and right lanes respectively, you get something like "I-405 Everett / I-405 Renton". Unless you live in the area, how the heck are you supposed to know which of these obscure places is north or south of your current position?
I firmly believe that highway signs should be usability tested in PC-based driving simulators or something similar before they can be foisted on the public. Seriously: A little bit of effort to make these things easier to understand could help reduce the traffic snarls that develop when people get confused and slow down or, worse, have to slam on their brakes or cut across traffic at the last minute because the signs weren't clear.
How long? (Score:2)
For the blind (Score:4, Informative)
For the first seventeen seconds, the disembodied head of Richard Ankrom floats mysteriously in front of his road sign as it talks about his project in a spooky, ominous voice.
In the next scene (you can hear the music change), you see him carefully examining a post with the INTERSTATE 5 symbol. The camera changes to a close up so you can see him comparing the blue of the shield a a color wheel he holds againts the sign.
Another scene change. Now Rick is on a bridge, looking down along the road sign attached to its side. He takes out his ruler... suddenly a big ruler fades, phantom-like, into the middle of the screen! The background fades into Rick's pepective, looking down at the road below as the cars drive underneath him--yet the ruler... remains! It moves further away, then closer, and starts to slide to the right as the background switches to the original view of the scene. Rick disappears as he bends behind the sign...
...and now a white-gloved hand rubbing a cloth over the pencil-outlined letters "RS"... the camera zooms out... "ERS"... "TERST"... now the camera is so far away that you can no longer recognize the letters. All you see in that same mysterious hand--now attached to an arm--rubbing what looks like dirt on a white surface. Wait... now you can see an outline! Its an interstate shield!
As the significance of this realization grips us, the rubbing hand fades away to a shadow... and then two shadows... and then none.
The camera has now pulled back to the point where we can catch a glimmer of Rick's chest--apparantly he is standing by his drawing. He walks to the side, and starts to roll it up--revealing a white shield lying underneath it!
The camera zooms... we are just able to make out the word "interstate" as the image changes.
We can now see the letters "ERST", only now in thicker pencil. Some sort of pale coloring lies ever the E... wait! That coloring is actually a sheet, which Rick is now using to cover "RST". You can only see his hand as it sets it down. His thumb rubs the top of the sheet, and then his fingers do the rest. The world becomes fuzzy...
We see the letters "RST"--the "E" presumably being covered by his hand. A ruler lies underneath the letters, oriented such that the numbers read upside-down to us. He traces along the ruler with a sharp object as hand and ruler and object all fade into oblivion, leaving only the letters. His hand mysteriously fades in and out at different positions and angles, cutting away at the outlines of different letters. A piece of his forehead pops into the scene, and then...
We see him peeling off the pale covering--yet pieces of it now remain where the letter outlines had been traced.
Now the angle shifts. We are now looking down at the word "INTERSTATE" from the right. He is applying some sort of pale tan tape to the top of the words. These hands start to fade away as another pair of hands fades in, applying tape to the left side. (The arms remain hidden.)
The image now dissolves into a completely new scene. We look down at both of his arms and hands donned in white gloves as one hang scoups green paint out of a can being held by the second. A color table lies sprawling open on the wooden table beneath.
The camera zooms out a little as his right hand stirrs the paint.
The hands fade away... now we see him (even a portion oh his head!) carefully comparing a rectangle he his holding in his hand to the aforemetioned color table.
Dissolution steals this image and replaces it with another. We are now outdoors. We can see Rick frow the abdomin up, facing us, and spraying red paint over our eyes. As the image is covered with this foggy red, the image transitions to a more solid red, with the clear white words "Pantone Color 199-200" at the bottom.
The red disappears as quickly (yet as gradually) as it appeared. We now see Rick spraying red the top of the interstate shield as it lies up-side down against some sort of rectangular prop covered in cloth.
The spray-paint disappears and the red paint on the sign becomes... green? Ah, no, it is now being covered with a green sheet as Rick sprays the top of the sign blue.
The red words "Pantone Color 293" fade onto the bottom, ominously, and then vanish as mysteriously as they had appeared.
A fast fade... now we see him spraying green onto some sort of table lying not far off the tiled ground... and green slowly blends into the scene along with the white words "Pantone Color 340-341" until both dominate... but once they do, the letters fade and a hand moves into our vision.
The hand peels away... an R! Realization dawns upon us as the angle changes to show him peeling off the letter to its right.
The scene changes again. Now we shee the shield standing upright, in its glorious red, white, and blue, as his hands, reaching from the top of our vision, cut away an "E" and completing the white word "INTERSTATE" at the top of the sign. He then peels off the last of the border lying at the top on the sign.
His body now fades into the right of the screen, starting to peel... something from the middle of the sign. The camera zooms into his hands... both hands are now peeling away at...
The bottom of a 5 appears in our vision, filled with several strange circles. His hand reaches from the bottom of our vision, grabs, and removes one of the circles.
Our vision grows blurry... now we see the bottom of a drill, as the hand repeatedly squezes the handle.
Quick fade.. we see some sort of nozzle being pressed against a small disc held by three of his fingers. We zoom in and watch as the nozzle squirts glue which Rick traces into a circle. This being done, the nozzle is pulled away...the scene changes...
...and we watch as the same hand now PUTS BACK the circle it had earlier removed from the 5!
Dramatic music and scene change. We now see Rick from a birds-eye view as he walks along a sidewalk next to a highway... he gets smaller as the camara soars higher. He approaches a hanging overhead road sign.
Our vision quickly flicks to a new scene, where we now see him much closer, almost completely obscured by greenery as he lays a ladder againts a large, metal pole.
The scene again changes abruptly, now showing us pole and ladder from a side view. We zoom into the ladder...
And switch back whence we came. Now Rick is climbing up his ladder....
Ane now we are like an eyeball floating in space, peering at Rick from a moderate distance as he makes it to the top of the ladder. We see him toss some white object (his towel?) onto a porch under the sign.
For a single instant, our vision changos, showing him leaning down and doing something next to the left side of the sign. Less than a second later we now see him climbing a stepladdep as he carries the word "NORTH" in white on a green background. It looks as if a piece of the sign was missing (or is it just a board lying against the sign?)...
...before we can ponder this thought for too long, the angle switches again. Now we see him from above and to the side as he mounts the right side of "NORTH" to the road sign. (It was a board, by-the-way.)
The scene has changed again. Now we see him kneeling on the "porch" under the sign on the right side... it looks as if he is prying or pulling a blue shield with a 5 on it out of a black bag.
The camera again flicks back, now showing Rick as he carries his shield over to the left side. We hear voices.
Now we are closer to him and see him lifting the shield against the sign... now we are above him and watch as he uses his electric screwdriver to mount it into place.
We watch from behind as he now removes the wooden board, first on the ladder, then on the porch (a tricky task, seeing as NORTH and 5 were both mounted over it for some reason). The 5 droops to the side... the scene changes and now we watch him fixing it.
The image becomes blurry and turbulent. Red words appear in two lines along the bottom of the screen: "Camera 3: Mark Concha" and "Driver/Grip: Markus Hays"
We see, vaguely (since our vision is shaking around) a man on a platform on a metal pole... another man breifly enters our vision.
Our vision stops jolting as terribly, but is now a touch unfocused. It is now directed directly at the road sign, and zooms in to the man as he walks across the porch.
Everything becomes much clearer and the words at the bottom disappear. We watch a little above and from a moderate distance (just far enough away to see the entire hanging road sign) as Rick takes down his ladder and carries it back to the right side of the sign. As he is about 1/2 of the way across the scene changes to show him climbing back down the ladder and to the ground.
Fade to black.
Re:For the blind (Score:2)
Good work!
Think you could work up a version for the deaf? Thanx!
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Re:How is this art? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How is this art? (Score:5, Insightful)
He made a perfect replica of a highway sign, which probably isn't all that easy to do on your own. He did it in broad daylight. He got away with it for months. Besides, art imitates life (or in this case, makes life a little easier for everyone else.)
Re:How is this art? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, engineering (supposedly) makes life easier for everyone. Art says something transcendant about the human condition. I don't think "Interchange coming up" quite rises to this level.
Just because it's difficult and takes care, doesn't mean it's "art". Just because it was subtle doesn't mean it's "art". Just because he ret-conned it as sticking it to the faceless bureaucracy, doesn't mean it's "art".
It might qualify as a hack, which is orthogonal to its being art, but I have my doubts even there. This guy had his sign seem invisible because it made sense. A good hack plays with what's there, in a way not consistent with the original scene, so that later, you ask, "Why the heck didn't I see that?"
Re:How is this art? (Score:2)
Re:How is this art? (Score:2)
Re:How is this art? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How is this art? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How is this art? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How is this art? (Score:4, Interesting)
If I did it, it would not be art, because I'm not a artiste.
I pity the modern artist; adrift in a sub-culture that actively works to undermine everything, even itself; they live in a solipsistic nightmare.
Re:How is this art? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's good art, which reaches its audience, often (but not always) tells a story, and works on levels as simple as "look what I can do with a couple of lines and blocks of color" (Mondrian) and "pretty Italian girl with strange expression" (the Mona Lisa) to something as complex and/or controversial as "Sex is fun, get comfy with it" (Annie Sprinkle) and "Remember those caught in the middle" (Guernica by Picasso) to something unusual along the lines of "enjoy your food" (Thomas Keller's restaurant, the French Laundry) or "remember the nameless" (the New England Holocaust Memorial, with its etched rows of numbers).
Some artists do have solipsistic tendencies; endless reams of teen angst poetry are only the beginning of that. IMHO deconstructionism has been a disaster for the humanities, occasionally a useful tool but generally bypassing intent and message to focus solely on motivation. Marshall McLuhan said "the medium is the message". While I don't think this was precisely what he was talking about, art is still a form of mass communications. If the artist can't communicate with the audience, that doesn't make it not art. If the artist chooses to use a nontraditional medium to make his point, that doesn't make it not art. The idea of modern art is to push the frontiers. Honestly, to me a Mondrian is indistinguishable from the pattern of a set of drapes that might have been sitting around since 1970. That's fine. But the fact is that you can't dismiss the idea that "art is what I say it is" out of hand.
This guy chose to use a BGS (Big Green Sign) as his medium. I would personally consider calling it art to be a stretch, but it's an incredible hack, and if you consider hacks to be artistry it is an excellent example of it.
/Brian
Re:How is this art? (Score:3, Interesting)
If the artist chooses to use a nontraditional medium to make his point, that doesn't make it art, either. Too much of modern art -- to my admittedly untrained eye -- is the form of "Look at how clever I am to do something to this medium." That's not enough to qualify.
Modern art seems to be a collection of people screaming "Look at me! Look at me!" I disagree that this is really art. Art is a transcendant statement about the human condition. This is a road sign. I don't think they overlap.
I don't think this is an incredible hack. Its invisibility depended only on its utter reasonableness. He crafted a good sign but essentially he was just an unpaid independent contractor for CalTrans. True hacks, the really good ones, fade into the background by taking advantage of your preconceptions, but then get you to scratch your head and wonder, how did I ever think that was normal. A true hack, in the same vein as this alleged one, was when MIT students replaced the engraving(!) in one of their halls. They changed the motto of the school to something more, well, offbeat, and did it by carving the letters into foam, then placing them in front of the actual letters. Thus, people saw engraved letters and just filed it away, not noticing till much later that the mottom was wrong.
That was a great hack. This, this is just roadwork.
Re:How is this art? (Score:2)
Well, that's *your* definition of art, but I (and most rationalists) don't believe that any sort of "transcendant statement" about anything is possible.
The most famous picture in Western art is the Mona Lisa, which most now accept is a feminized self-portrait of da Vinci himself. All it tells us is poor Lenny da Vinci had odd hangups.
Re:How is this art? (Score:2)
I'm not quite as cynical as my initial post made me out to be; but if I had to pick one of the extreme positions to take, I'd be unusually comfortable with the extreme position that modern (which is to say, the last five years, rather then a technical term referring to a specific period and style) art is largely irrelevant, due to excessive insularity and defensiveness.
Personally, I think 'hack' comes a lot closer; even in the normal artsy-fartsy sense. I don't see what borders this pushed exactly (except legal ones!), which you can see many posters on the subject alluding to. Still, regardless of what you call it, I think it was worth doing. I get the sense this is "art-for-want-of-a-better-term", because his community doesn't know the word "hack".
Re:How is this art? (Score:2)
Re:How is this art? (Score:3, Informative)
see what Rolf says [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Non-Windows Real Player download link (Score:2)
http://forms.real.com/real/player/unix/unix.html [real.com]
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:4, Insightful)
But, of all the cities I have been to in Canada, Calgary is the worst.
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:2, Interesting)
When my wife and I went to Nova Scotia on our honeymoon, one of the first things we noticed was that the suggested speed on freeway offramps was actually accurate. In the USA, an offramp that says 40 mi/h means you can go 55 or 60 without losing control of the car.
In Canada, an offramp sign that says 50 km/h means that you will probably lose control of your vehicle if you go much faster than 50. It's the maximum safe speed. The US prints a "suggested" speed which is so much lower than the actual speed that everyone ignores them.
The sad part of this is that a couple of students from Newton, MA died on a band trip driving through New Brunswick. Apparently their bus was going too fast on a highway offramp.
As soon as we heard about it on the news, my wife and I instantly knew what probably happened...
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:2)
Sorry officer, I didn't see the sign that told me to obey the other signs.
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:2)
The best signage I have seen is on the ramps around the airport in Milwalkee, Wisconsin. They are clear, well placed, and frequent but not overkill.
Re:Hey I helped a homeless, blind, gay man ... (Score:2)
Re:Dissapointing (Score:4, Insightful)
Chris Beckenbach
Re:Dissapointing (Score:2, Offtopic)
I think it's rather a fun idea, actually. I can think of a few places in Massachusetts where this would be a good idea (the ancient I-95 shields on the Tobin Bridge in Charlestown, for example, when I-95 hasn't gone anywhere near the Tobin Bridge, or even Boston for that matter, for about twenty years now).
Artists do a lot of strange things that make one slap one's head and say "dammit, why didn't I think of that?" Reminds me very much of the artist I once saw on TV who used to print his own dollar bill designs. He didn't spend the bills exactly, just traded them for goods with willing merchants. (I don't think it qualified as counterfeiting, as he was treating it as a barter transaction and most of them didn't look much like the real thing anyway.)
Every once in a while the phrase "subvert the dominant paradigm" doesn't sound like the fourth tattered bumper sticker from the right on the back of some aged hippie's car...
/Brian
Re:I feel SPAMMED for having read this... (Score:2)