Fairey Tale

Shepard Fairey, the creator of the Obama HOPE image, and artist behind the OBEY street art, was arrested in Boston on Friday night at the opening of his new exhibition at the ICA.

He was arrested for outstanding warrants for damage to public property, a charge he has already faced 15 times. In addition to his arrest, a new concern must be his attorneys ongoing discussions with the associated press over the use of their image as the inspiration for the Obama poster. They want credit and compensation.

Shepard Fairy talks about his poster for Obama





His work is all over the streets in Boston and Cambridge, in a combined gallery/stealth/sponsored street campaign – similar to the Tate Modern exhibition of street artists last summer. My understanding is there are commissioned works on the streets of Chinatown sponsored in part by the gallery and part by the local business association as well as a number of major pieces that have gone up in secrecy over the two cities in the last few months. One giant piece I noticed on construction hoarding in Cambridge was taken down the next day – my assumption was that it was removed due to its controversial imagery – I have since heard rumor that the owner of the construction site was notified that it might be worth something...

I’m not sure how I feel about that guy profiting from what was meant to be a public piece of art. Yet I see that it was clearly his property to do with what he chooses.


The value of street art as a commodity raises an interesting conversation - The infamy of Banksy, his recognition as a mainstream artist and a cache of celebrity buyers, has pushed street art into legitimate and sellable art form. This has had a game changing effect. No longer is a mural seen as a nuisance to be washed off, now its seen as a gift to be protected (many Banksys across London are protected by sheets of plastic screening), a value add (in the case of the Liverpool pub a Banksy mural was auctioned with the building thrown in!), or an opportunity to pilfer and profit (pieces of wall removed with angle grinders and the stolen piece auctioned on ebay for twenty thousand pounds). They have become tourist attractions with Banksy tours and guidebooks to the city available.

Yet the location of these pieces, outdoors and all weather, painted and postered and usually publicly accessible, make them at their core, transient and temporary. Somehow the protection of these public pieces seems false, and people profiting from them seems unfair. That said, the Last Supper was painted on a wall made, in part, of beaten earth, and if that hadn’t been protected and maintained, we would be missing one of the worlds great artworks.


So what’s best? Protect and preserve the works artificially? or let them fade, be defaced, and lose them to the rigors of the public realm?

Now, in addition to stealth bombing works, there seems to be growing opportunity for artists to partner with local governments, business associations and developers to place artworks in public open air galleries and sanctioned spaces.

The Brisbane City Council Electricity Box program has been running since the late 90’s/early 2000's (?) and is a great example of local government providing a public gallery space for artists that has been a launching pad for many rising Australian art stars.



Mentioned above, in Summer 08, London’s Tate Modern partnered with Nissan Quashqai to host a group of international street artists in an exhibition that extended beyond the gallery to the facade of the building and the surrounding streets. Like the current Fairey exhibition, the artists extended their reach even further out into the city with pieces located all over the city.

A short film by one of the featured artists: Muto by Blu

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Quashqai Ad


The Quashqai campaign claimed the urban environment as its playground – an increasingly common theme in advertising – see anything by Sony Bravia, or just about anybody working in mobile. As mobile and locative applications increase in usability, the extension of new and interesting urban applications is enormous.

As an urban designer and community builder, I am super positive about any message that challenges people to more meaningfully engage in the world around them, that challenges citizens to use the public spaces of our cities, and that engages in active political discussion about how our urban environments grow and evolve.

With ongoing cooperation between artists and designers, big business, local governments and business associations there is great opportunity to implement exciting collaborations that challenge people to adventure and exploration. The chance for artists to access meaningful funding opportunities is also an added and often overlooked necessity.

With creative visionaries like Sheppard Fairey exploring new ways of working across industries and funding platforms he is leading a charge of artistic enterprise and political dialogue. By engaging artistically, politically and publicly he is reaching out to a more engaged world. Lets hope he can sort out his legal issues asap!

Tribute Rewind

In a cunning reversal of fan tribute, OASIS have put their new songs in the hands of NYC street performers to launch their new album – letting others interpret their material before it becomes ubiquitous is an interesting means of subversion, and putting the new songs directly into the hands of buskers is a lovely way of engaging directly with commuter communities.

Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul In The Streets


There is an interesting tension between fan made tributes and their creators – while the Indiana Jones reenactment The Raider received glowing praise from Spielberg, it is still only available in very limited release. But despite the sometimes lukewarm reception, fans continue to pay tribute – big and small.


Lego Izzard


Gary Larson Farside Reenactments


Computer Games - Mario Reenactments



Star Wars meets Family Guy in Blue Harvarst


And in a poetic yet labyrinthine tribute to the Michel Gondry tribute film Be Kind Rewind - that follows fans inspired to remake (or swede) their own tributes to films - Gondry swedes his own preview. ow my head.



The Gondry film ends with a celebration of the message that our own stories are often the most important. Demonstrating a common community engagement technique, the characters collect the stories and personal histories of the local neighborhood and create a community produced film event.

Community engagement specialists, architects, urban designers etc often use community filmmaking to engage citizens in the regeneration of their local areas as demonstrated in the short film “I’m Moving In” from Len Grant. It’s about the redevelopment of the Cardroom Estate in Manchester – part of a collaboration between innovative British developers Urban Splash, architect Will Alsop and the community of New Islington.


As Urban Splash continue to demonstrate, community engagement and regeneration can be meaningful, commercially exciting, creatively innovative and artistic. I'm as excited by the possibilities demonstrated by their work in Manchester as I am by the role reversal executed by the OASIS buskers.

(Perhaps, in modern meme tradition, the final clip for this post should be the Manchester band performing a song written by one of the New Islington residents?)

What the Helvetica!

Text and typography are ubiquitous in the public realm. Signage, directions, slogans, graffiti… but recently I’ve been noticing an explosion of text and typographical art both online and on the ground – from slogan tee’s to a cursory glance over at fffound – seems like everyone is text obsessed.



The 2007 Helvetica film, “a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture… looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which recently celebrated its 50th birthday)”.



On the streets on London, Eines’ giant lettering provides captions to places and experiences while his rollerdoor series provided the backdrop for the recent Alphabeat launch.

In another recent musical/typographic collaboration, Evan Roth has created a terrific textual video feast for the new Jay Z/Kanye/Santo Gold video Brooklyn We Go Hard for (Red)Wire.



Niels Meulman’s work with Caligrafitti garnered him a solo show in 2007 and his stylish work is popping up more and more frequently.


In a beautiful and poetic intervention, London based artist and illustrator Anna Garforth is experimenting in Moss Graffiti – Growing words on wisdom on the walls of the city. Instructions available here.

Once Upon a Time...

As we become more intimately and ubiquitously engaged in multimedia multiplatform lives – with constant and unlimited access to a variety of media – print, video, audio, web, mobile etc – and more active in massively multiplayer/collaborative forums – Wikipedia, SecondLife, Facebook, WoW, etc – new forms of interactive storytelling are emerging as viable mainstream platforms.

The written word is jumping on and off the page to engage new interactive applications, temporal elements, video, mapping, mobile content and gaming elements. This collaborative cross-pollination continues to create a hybrid storytelling mashup that offers endless possibility in interactive entertainment and fun.



WeTellStories is a fantastic project from 2007 developed in collaboration with UK based sixtostart and Penguin Books. Working with up and coming Penguin authors, sixtostart developed 6 stories into web based interactive adventures. Using existing and familiar platforms like blogs and Google maps, the collaborations have opened up new possibilities in storytelling platforms. My pick of the bunch is the exquisitely executed The 21 Steps by Charles Cumming - A murder mystery translated into a cross London chase over Googlemaps.

Watch Adrian and Dan Hon of Six to Start talk about the We Tell Stories project here:





A new novel by JC Hutchins – Personal Effects: Dark Arts – combines the traditions of a paperback with the gameplay of an ARG - allowing the reader to enter the world of the story through interactive elements.


The traditional paperback murder mystery jumps off the page into a myriad online alternatives. Characters have active lives online that the reader can access by using additional cards and props that accompany the book, , searching for events online, even calling phone numbers called by characters in the story. A collaboration between J.C. Hutchins and Smith & Tinker, Darks Art goes live in June 2009 and promises to shake up publishing with a new mainstream form of interactive storytelling.



Jordan Weisman, CEO & Founder of Smith & Tinker, is also behind another interactive storytelling smash hit Cathy’s Book. Published in September 2006, Cathy’s Book reads in the form of a young girls diary and provides a set of clues for her disappearance. This novel uses weblinks, phone numbers, and community forums to engage readers in an interactive world that lives outside the pages of the book. In an interesting move, a product placement deal was struck with Covergirl cosmetics, and particular products name checked in the text (these were removed in final print) in return for promotion on friendly websites.

Author, Sean Stewart speaks in detail about creating the novel here. A sequel, Cathy’s Key, was published in May 2008.

Stepping into a more geospatial/documentary arena, and there are a number of exciting projects exploring mobile ways of bringing local stories to life.


Murmur is a Toronto based storytelling project that first began in 2003. In their own words: “[murmur] is a documentary oral history project that records stories and memories told about specific geographic locations.”

One of the first storytelling projects to go mobile, the project is still going strong with little change to their initial modus operandi. The project team record the stories of local residents and make them available through mobile. Murmur signs are installed in project locations with a phone number that participants can call to listen to the stories on the spot.



Yellow Arrow gives this personal storytelling element a 2.0 perspective. In their words: “ Yellow Arrow is a global public art project of local experiences. Combining stickers, mobile phones and an international community, Yellow Arrow transforms the urban landscape into a "deep map" that expresses the personal histories and hidden secrets that live within our everyday spaces”. Begun in New York in 2004 Yellow Arrow has grown to over 35 countries and 380 cities around the world.


Fiction or factual, these projects often get off the ground with funding from arts grants, advertising sponsorship, or brand collaboration - a common issue faced by producers of this new media is how to sustainably monetize their art. Cathy’s Book and Dark Arts are forging new commercial expectations for production and carving out a new publishing niche for this cross over genre.

Now, with Disney currently recruiting in its Interactive Think Tank, this can only mean new and interesting developments are on the way.