Wednesday, February 4, 2004
Found art.
I found this sticker pasted along one of the flourescent lights in a subway train in Manhattan.
Part of me wishes that the author had included a URL so I could go check out their website and maybe find some other cleverness to flip through at work. Part of me is glad, though, that they didn’t. They’ve left me to use a little bit of the imagination that seems so rarely exercised sometimes — now that seemingly any piece of information can be had at one’s fingertips — to wonder who put it there, whether other stickers with the same have been stuck all over the place, whether they say the same thing or have other comments, etc. Ask me and I’ll whine about how the mainstream news twists opinion by decontextualizing information, but sometimes a little decontextualizing can be a good thing. Like those watermelon stickers that have been stuck around Austin on out-of-the-way sides of buildings and traffic signs. (Also, The Crying of Lot 49 was a favorite book of mine in college, which you’ll understand if you’ve read it.)
It’s also a bit refreshing in this cultural climate that has so many people trying to behave like their own little micro-branding media empires.
Self included.
Vote Josh.
