MAGAZINES & PRESS - COMPLETED STREET PROJECTS - PUBLIC AD CAMPAIGN BLOG

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Times Square Subway Advertising Projection Screen

This image was sent to me by a PublicAdCampaign reader yesterday and was taken in the NYC subway system. In a continued effort to finance our ailing MTA we are forced to consume more and more advertising. According to the reader, this projection is the size of a small movie screen and the washed out quality you see above is actually how the image looked in real life. The MTA, operating on a budget that would dwarf many US city budgets, will have to occupy every space we have with advertising to even begin to put a dent in our public transportation operating costs. If this is the case, are we willing as a public to allow every inch of our public transportation system to be covered in commercial messages? And if we are unwilling to let the proliferation of such media fully takeover, why allow these singular examples when we know they will not put a dent in the financial troubles of our beloved MTA?

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Monday, July 27, 2009

Read Chompsky, Or Don't

Is PosterBoy back in town doing subway mash-ups? I haven't heard anything from him in a while and so I'm gonna assume this is someone else. It's a little too simple for his work anyways.

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Friday, July 3, 2009

Infrastructure as Advertisement

VIA BLDG Blog

I have an architecture friend who follows BLDG blog at least close enough to send me related posts once in a while. Their recent comment on the renaming of the Atlantic/Pacific station in Brooklyn to the Barclays station is well worth the read. Quite understandably, the post talks about the absurdly cheap price this station was sold for, something we also commented on a few days ago after reading the New York Times article.

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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

M.T.A. Sells Naming Rights to Subway Station

Quite simply put, the tactic of floating the MTA budget on outdoor advertising revenue is appalling and misguided. It seems that with all of this recession talk and fiscal crises, transit officials are behaving like junkies looking for their next fix, selling off would be consumer electronics for the price of a dime bag. I don't promote the sale of our public environment to private companies but if the MTA is going to purport that they have their hands tied, then they should at least be making a profitable business deal.

The renaming of the Atlantic Avenue, Pacific Street and Flatbush Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn to include Barclays bank will do absolutely nothing to ease the financial crises burdening our great transit system while opening a floodgate of corporate sponsorship of our public services. The proposed 4 million dollars which will be doled out at a measly $200,000 per year over the next 20 years is an insult to everyone that holds our cities visual environment and history sacred. I say proposed because in the past these arrangements to pay the city over a long term have resulted in money owed that isn't paid.

I don't even have to go into the actual numbers here, as they aren't needed to realize how incredibly small a contribution this revenue will be to our city, but lets give it a go anyways. The MTA carries about 7.6 million people per day at $2.00 per ride, or 15.2 million dollars a day in revenue. multiply that by 365 and you get 5.548 billion dollars. This number begins to approach the enormous operating budget of our immense transit system, only off by a few billion that comes in other forms of revenue. If we only use the revenue made through ridership, the contribution made by the branding of The Atlantic Pacific station is %0.0036049026676279743 of the budget.

And to those who say "every bit counts", lets remember that the idiots working for the MTA who are brokering this deal, probably make more than the $200,000.00 a year. The result is the sale of our cities assets fire sale style to pay employees that have nothing to do with running our transit system.

Reader comments on this article seem to express the public's general view on this matter.

VIA The New York Times

Selling the name of a subway station has been a goal of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for nearly five years. But interest has been low, even for a piece of real estate so recognizable to the public.

So it was with surprisingly little fanfare that the authority announced on Monday that it had finally found a buyer.

If a $4 million deal is approved on Wednesday, the nexus of subway stops at Atlantic Avenue, Pacific Street and Flatbush Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn will add an additional name to its already lengthy title: Barclays.

This may seem odd, since Barclays is a bank based in London with offices in Manhattan, and the only Barclay Street on the city map is not even in Brooklyn. (It’s in Manhattan, in the financial district.)

There will, however, soon be a Barclays Center, the sports arena planned as the focal point of the Atlantic Yards project, and the developer, Forest City Ratner, has agreed to pay the transportation authority $200,000 a year for the next 20 years to rename one of the oldest and busiest stations in the borough.

This raises a few questions. An academic might talk of the intersection between public and private space. A straphanger may ask how all those names can fit into one announcement.

And if a company can pay to get its name on any station, a New Yorker might wonder what’s next: Coca-Cola Presents 59th Street-Columbus Circle?

The answer is maybe. Once upon a time, geographic relevance determined a station’s name, but now, the authority says it is open to any naming agreements that can raise revenue for its transit system, including ones not directly tied to location.

“It’s always a question of balancing our need for revenue and our stewardship of public space,” said Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the agency. Advertising may make the most sense for a company associated with a station, he said, “but we’re not closing anything out.”

And the Barclays deal has defenders on the authority’s governing board.

“It’s not like Taco Bell saying it wants Grand Army Plaza or something like that,” said John H. Banks III, a board member since 2004.

Would Mr. Banks oppose that idea?

“A year and a half ago? Yeah,” he said. “Tomorrow? No.”

Still, while selling station names could bring the authority revenue it needs, advertising experts say companies may not be as well-served.

“To be effective, the viewer needs to understand the relevance of the ad,” said Allen Adamson of Landor, a branding firm. “To rename the 59th and Lex stop the McDonald’s stop — it ain’t going to work. I don’t think it will stick.”

Indeed, other cities have tried this with little success. Boston, for example, tried auctioning off four historic stations a few years ago and received no bids. Though Citigroup paid $400 million to sponsor the new Mets stadium in Queens, the company refused to pay the authority to rename the stop nearby, which is now known as Mets/Willets Point.

To determine its asking price for the Brooklyn station, the authority studied a few successful efforts, like a monorail in Las Vegas named for Nextel, the communications company, and streetcars in Tampa, Fla., named for a local electric utility. And the popularity of the station — the second-busiest in Brooklyn last year — was taken into account.

“It’s grounded in reasonable business practices,” Mr. Banks said. “Obviously Van Siclen on a No. 2 is not going to be as valuable to a corporate entity as Atlantic Avenue.”

The station name change is scheduled for the opening of the arena, timed for 2012. The exact punctuation of the new station name has yet to be determined, the authority said, although hyphens or slashes are likely to be used. New signage would be paid for by Forest City Ratner, and the authority plans to introduce the revised name gradually in maps and timetables after the arena opens.

A few New York businesses contacted on Tuesday said they were not interested in a piece of the underground. Zabar’s, the Upper West Side food emporium, said it was not interested in the 79th Street station. Macy’s said a sponsorship deal at 34th Street was not in the cards.

And straphangers at the Atlantic Avenue station like Nick Desio, 53, a Citigroup employee who commutes from Long Island, said names were beside the point.

“They can call it anything they want, as long as my train’s on time,” he said.

Ethan Wilensky-Lanford contributed reporting.

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Thursday, June 4, 2009

Transit Authority Feeling the Pain From a Crippled Advertising Market

IllegalSigns.ca has had their eye on Titan for some time, including a recent post which ecstatically awaits a possible impending bankruptcy. This recent post, I assume was due to a recent NY times article (reproduced below) about the companies problems paying it's debts, including a large sum owed to our very own MTA.

What perplexes me is the sympathy we give to these companies that time and time again reap huge profits, flagrantly disregard the law, take advantage of our public thoughts and identities all under the guise of floating our precious public services. Public payphones, irreplaceable in the event of a "terrorist attack", yet entirely unused in our wireless world, are kept operational by their use as advertising shelters. Unnecessary news stand replacements were ushered in by Cemusa, declaring a cleaner vision and utility for the cities street furniture, cost defrayed by ad contracts which excluded stand owners. And most importantly, our Metropolitan Transit Authority, seemingly unable to function without the precious advertising revenue, and yet we aren't even getting paid.

By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: May 24, 2009

The worst advertising market in decades has had a devastating, and well-documented, effect on newspapers, magazines and television networks. But now another recipient of ad dollars is being hurt by the market slump at a time it can little afford it: mass transit.

In recent months, a company that sells many of the ads that appear on buses and trains and in stations in New York, Boston, Minneapolis and other cities has come up short in its payments to transit agencies, citing a sharp drop in ad rates and sales.

New York is among the hardest hit.

The company, Titan Worldwide, fell short a total of $7.5 million in mandatory payments to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from February through April, citing lower than expected ad sales. That would be enough to buy 16 new buses for the authority, which recently received a state bailout in the face of multibillion-dollar budget deficits over the next few years.

“This is another example of the M.T.A.’s exposure to the global economic recession,” said Aaron Donovan, a spokesman for the authority, which plans to raise fares and tolls by about 10 percent in June.

Titan sells ads that appear on buses and in Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road trains and stations, including Grand Central Terminal.

Another company, CBS Outdoor, sells ads in the subway system, and it fulfilled its contractual requirement of making a $55 million lump-sum payment to the authority in January for all of 2009.

A CBS spokeswoman, Jodi Senese, said that subway sales in New York remained strong, in spite of the overall industry slump, partly because of new types of ads in the system, like those on the exterior of subway cars.

Companies like Titan and CBS make money by contracting with transit agencies and agreeing to sell ads that appear in their buses, trains and stations. The ad company agrees up front to make guaranteed payments to the transit agency or pay it a percentage of the receipts, whichever is greater. The company keeps the rest for expenses and profits.

At the end of the year, both Titan and CBS may be required to increase their payments to the authority, if a designated percentage of total sales exceeds what has already been paid.

Titan still owes the authority an additional amount for last year’s ad sales. The company would not say how much it owed but said it intended to make the payment this year.

The authority is negotiating with Titan over its inability to make its required monthly payments, and neither side would give details of the talks.

“We’re trying to work with them to find a way to keep this contract in place,” Mr. Donovan said. “Our goal is to work it out and minimize the impact on the M.T.A.’s bottom line.”

Titan’s chairman, William Apfelbaum, said that ad rates and sales have plummeted with the distressed economy, pushing the company’s sales revenue this year down about 25 percent.

“In my 30-plus years in the business there’s never been a year that was down versus the prior year,” he said. “This is a first.”

Mr. Apfelbaum said that he hoped to renegotiate his agreements with transit agencies “to keep us from suffering catastrophic losses.”

Titan’s problems are much the same nationwide.

In Boston, Titan fell $321,000 short in its payment for March and April to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, and it has told the authority, according to a spokesman, Joe Pesatauro.

“This news from Titan certainly is not helping the situation,” said Mr. Pesatauro, explaining that the authority is grappling with a projected budget deficit of $160 million for the fiscal year that starts on July 1.

In Minneapolis and St. Paul, Titan paid Metro Transit, which provides bus and light rail service, about $100,000 less than the required $1 million payment for the first three months of this year, according to Bruce Howard, the transit agency’s director of marketing. He said that ad sales during the period were about 20 percent below what they were the previous year.

Transit officials in Chicago, Philadelphia and with San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit system said that they had also been approached by Titan to renegotiate contract terms.

The slump comes at an inopportune time for transit agencies, which have been hit hard by shrinking tax revenues and, in some cases, decreasing ridership.

Ad revenues make up only a small portion of total revenues at the agencies, but transit officials have been seeking to maximize income from such sources to help relieve the pressure for fare increases.

According to the Federal Transit Administration’s National Transit Database, transit agencies nationwide reported $334 million in ad revenue in 2007. That was about one percent of total operating funds.

In New York, bus ad rates vary depending on what part of the city the buses travel, with rates in Manhattan being the highest, though the rates have been lowered in response to the slumping ad market. In Manhattan, an ad that covers one side of a bus typically sells for about $1,500 a month. At this time last year, the same ad sold for about $1,800, Mr. Apfelbaum said.

Warner Brothers came to us and said, ‘We want the same exact schedule as last year but we’re going to pay 20 percent less or you’re not going to get it,’ ” Mr. Apfelbaum said, referring to the number of ads placed by the entertainment company.

Mr. Apfelbaum said that while there are also fewer ads being sold, his company makes sure it keeps the ad spaces on buses and trains and in stations filled, because empty space would look bad.

Sometimes, he said, Titan will put up more ads than a customer has paid for, to fill what would be empty space.

Titan was created in 2001 and it has worked aggressively to win transit contracts.

The company received the New York bus and commuter rail contract in December 2006. It agreed to make a minimum guaranteed payment of $823 million over the course of the 10-year contract, $103 million more than the next-highest offer. The minimum payments this year come to $5.4 million a month.

As part of the contract, the company also agreed to pay the authority 72.5 percent of sales each year, if that amount was greater than the minimum payment. Mr. Apfelbaum said that is the highest percentage in the industry.

But Mr. Apfelbaum said he had not overbid to win the contract.

“This contract, in any kind of normal time, any year in my 35 years in the business except for 2009, is a profitable contract,” he said.

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Digital Bus Advertisement Video

This seems like a bad idea to me.

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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Just Another Saturday Night

I'm In the midst of planning a large project and therefor have not made much of my own work lately. It was bothering me last Saturday night and so I rummaged through my studio for some materials to quickly put something up before I went out. Turns out I had some vinyl letters lying around and so I quickly put together this little subway moment. It's not much but doing something like this regularly keeps me sane.

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Cutting Up Advertisements and Rearanging Them is Just Plain Fu

I know this photo is blurry and I don't have imagery of the final product, but trust me this guy was re-working that Adventureland poster with his headphones on. He was completely oblivious to the world around him, and was working like he thought what he was doing was legal. I quickly realized the desire to rearrange the space around you is inherent in many peoples public persona. The fact that subway advertisements are now stickers has made that process incredibly easy and I think the reason for the recent wave of ad reworkings, and of course the work of PosterBoy.

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Monday, March 23, 2009

Jennifer Jacobs has Fun at CBS's Expense

I had a class with Jennifer Jacobs at the CUNY Grad center and went the entire semester watching her sketch in her notebook with no knowledge of her outdoor visual activities.

Her statement of intent ends..."I am not interested in condemning or defending the condition of modern media; instead I am attempting to advance my understanding of the elements of popular culture that I identify with. My art is an effort to take responsibility for the effects of my exposure to popular media and provide an insightful and personal response."

Recent ad alterations prove she is taking that responsibility seriously, and attempting to teach us to do the same. I just wish those damn corporate icons would have been removed in the process.

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Monday, March 16, 2009

MTA the First to Officially *Not* Recognize the Name Citi Field

Naming sports venues and train stations after corporations is a different form of outdoor advertising that can't really be deemed illegal the same way I would like to see other forms of outdoor advertising made obsolete. It is nonetheless a fabulous intrusion on the part of any corporation using this tactic and should be paid for aggressively by those wishing to use such devious means of public communication. Citi pays 20 million a year for the right to call the Mets stadium Citi Field, and the MTA is doing the right thing by standing up to pressures to rename the station closest to the field for no compensation whatsoever. They will pay the Mets, a private for profit institution, but not the MTA, a bankrupt city agency and vital part of a healthy metropolis. I get it.

from Gothamist by

2009_03_willetsshea.jpg After initially thinking that they would rename the 7 Train subway stop in tandem with the new ballpark, the MTA announced that the train stop closest to the Mets' new digs will not carry the name "Citi Field" after the team refused to cough up any money for the station's name change. The station is nearly halfway through a planned $40 million in renovations to go along with the opening of the new stadium and the MTA had hoped to help pay for the work with a portion of the $20 million a year the Mets are receiving in naming rights from Citigroup. The team apparently wasn't eager to spread the wealth however and now the station will simply be renamed "Mets/Willets Point," the nearby LIRR station carrying the same name. On the upside, at least the MTA avoids the possibility of being forced into renaming the station again with no one exactly holding their breath that Citi Field (or as some are calling it, Debits Field) is a moniker that will last through the economic winter.

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Copycats Keep PosterBoy Working When He's Not in Town

I know for a fact that PosterBoy is not in town right now so this is definitely the work of other active participants in the PosterBoy project. Shine on you crazy diamonds!


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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Keep It Going Ads Parodied?

It's wonderful to see people conscious enough of their public space that they take the time to alter it. If anyone knows the person responsible for this I would love to be put in touch with them. I have a project coming up and I think they might be interested in participating.

VIA The Gothamist

A reader sent along these photos from the E train, saying, "I am sure that they are fakes and that they are making fun of the current Keep it Going NYC campaign." We asked an NYC Transit spokesman if they were fakes, to which he replied, "I have no idea." Smells like a renegade campaign to us! And unlike the KeepNewYorkMoving ad campaign, it's not asking Albany for funding, but criticizing both Governor Paterson for his budget cuts and the MTA for its proposed fare hikes and service cuts.

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Monday, March 2, 2009

MoMA Severs Ties with HappyCorp

A recent post by The Gothamist explains MoMA's final word on the whole PosterBoy alteration of the Atlantic/Pacific project. What I couldn't understand was why MoMA would speak so clearly against the vandalism when to do so would destroy their credibility with those who thought the stunt was interesting. It seems they are receiving a lot of pressure from the MTA and CBS outdoor. If this was the reason they were firing HappyCorp, I thought it a little sheepish of them. Researching more, I read a comment regarding PosterBoy's work on that station and I think it explains why MoMA might not have been game for such fun. It holds up quite well and is reproduced here.

By MisterSparkle on 02/24/2009 at 7:17pm

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that MoMA is involved in this, even if they are denying it. More to the point, though, I don't really understand the intentions of whoever actually vandalized the ads (be it a member of the Poster Boy movement or somebody else).

To a certain degree, I can understand vandalizing ads for large corporations, consumer products and the like in the name of both art and anarchy. But the MoMA ads seem to be largely unobstructed, unadulterated prints of some of their best art work. While I do take issue with MoMA's high admission prices, I respect their fundamental role as a cultural institution and their attempts to draw more visitors to the museum. Therefore, I see no reason to destroy MoMA ads that a) consist of already great artwork and b) have a generally admirable goal (promoting modern art and generating new patrons), especially if the ads will be replaced shortly at MoMA's expense.

To me, this is the height of snarky, holier-than-though post-modern derisiveness because it attacks the very art that gave way to the validation of subversive street art. If the person responsible was working with MoMA, I would be impressed by MoMA's awareness and hope that they might leave the ads as-is or do more work with street/graffiti art in their marketing. If the person was Poster Boy or some other adherent/imitator, he or she clearly has no respect for the art that gave rise to theirs and no sense of purpose and integrity.

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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Poster Boy and Aakash Nihalani rework Monet, Smells of Appropriation and Publicity Stunt

This seems to be the only commentary I've found on the PosterBoy, MoMA mashup that happened a few days ago at the Atlantic/Pacific train station in NYC. Mr. Gould's initial response to the MoMA installation is expected, yes it's clearly a publicity stunt and yes it is equivalent to an advertisement in every way. That said, it is expected PosterBoy would find his way to this station to call attention to this fact by treating the work the same way he has treated advertising throughout the subway system.

Mr. Gould's final remark about the connection between PosterBoy and Doug Jaeger turning this into a publicity stunt instead of a well guided attempt to continue along an artistic trajectory set nearly a year ago by PosterBoy, does not sit well with me. On some levels I agree that this wreaks of a partnership where both parties are clear about what they will gain from the stunt and are taking advantage of an opportunity. On another level I am aware of more of the back story than I think Mr. Gould is, and thus realize what an amazing opportunity for PosterBoy this was. The Atlantic/Pacific station is heavily trafficked and nearly impossible to hit. Without Doug Jaeger's participation this project probably could not have happened.

So as an artist, PosterBoy is in a strange position. By doing the project he is able to continue his work in an interesting way by leveling MoMA's art advertising stunt and thus comparing it to the regular advertising you see. He is also able to draw attention to his project on an unprecedented level, thus gaining momentum for what he hopes will be a strong investigation into who controls public communication in the public environment. The only thing he has to do is team up with someone involved with the MoMA project. Remember MoMA had nothing to do with this stunt.

And so the question remains. Does aiding a PR firm while moving his own ideas forward become caustic to his project as a whole?

VIA Free Williamsburg

C/O Dan Gould

My initial reaction to the MOMA installation at Atlantic Ave. was mixed. I concede that people are inundated with advertising, and this was an opportunity to offer people something more cultured. Still, the motivation seemed a little suspect. Seeing Poster Boy and Aakash Nihalani, however, remix the works made me very excited about the installation. While the public display makes the work vulnerable to vandalism, it also provides for the images to be appropriated and enter the larger cultural dialogue. It, therefore, brings a new life to the pieces and provides for more social commentary.

C/O Doug Jaeger

What I don't quite understand in this story is why Doug Jaeger, the advertising brains behind the original campaign, was photographed participating in the vandalism? The move reduces Poster Boy's street art to a publicity stunt. This makes the project seem calculated and doesn't bode well for the MoMA or Poster Boy.

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Friday, February 20, 2009

MoMA Atlantic/Pacific Project

In an effort to bring MoMA's permanent collection to the people and raise awareness for the museum, the Atlantic/Pacific train station has been overtaken by some 58 well known artists like Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Man Ray. It's a wonderful project and inspiring to see public space used for artwork instead of advertising. The work may not itself redefine the way public space is used but if for one moment the project can make you think of the possibilities for a newly imagined public culture, it serves a wonderful purpose. I also think you might see some things change in this station in the not so far future, so keep your eyes on it and I will report back soon.

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Thursday, February 12, 2009

A Forest in the Subway

NYC Arts for Transit brings us wonderful projects. It's a shame we can't redefine every station in this way, creating a public spaces of culture instead of consumption.

VIA NY Magazine

By Miranda Siegel
(Photo: Gaudéricq Robiliard/Courtesy of Starn Studios (South Ferry Station))

When commuters push through the turnstiles at the new South Ferry Terminal in a few weeks, they’ll find themselves surrounded by an arabesque of glass panels depicting intertwined silhouettes of trees—a lyrical, $1 million installation by the identical-twin artists Mike and Doug Starn. See It Split, See It Change reveals a parallel between the trees’ veiny structure and the gnarliness of the century-old subway. “We view cities as complex organisms made up of various systems, and we wanted to work with images of nature to help bring that through,” explains Doug, who with his brother has employed sinuous and knotty bark before, in the series Structure of Thought. The Starns spoke to New York about their new work, one of the MTA’s most ambitious “Arts for Transit” projects.


1. The Location
“The South Ferry station is thought of as just the terminus of the 1 train,” says Mike. “But we see it as the beginning of the city, from which everything else branches out.”

2. The Map
The marble mosaic is based on a 1640 image of Manhattan. “There’s a way to do contemporary mosaics in the subway, but we wanted to take it back,” says Mike. “So we spent time in Pompeii studying.”

3. The Collaboration
The Starns worked closely with the MTA’s architects and even had a say about issues like the placement of doors. “It’s the first time the art has been part of the process from the get-go,” says Mike.

4. The Links
Many of the outlines come from photos taken in Battery Park. “Trees have a hierarchal structure: trunk, branches, leaves,” says Doug. “When you flatten the images, you collapse that hierarchy—and suddenly connections happen everywhere.”

5. The Armor
Yes, it’s glass. In the subway. But at least it’s toughened: “It’s fused, which gives it resistance equivalent to tempered glass,” says Doug. It’s also hung as its own curtain wall, to avoid damage from behind (vibration, settling, seepage).

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Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Two sides to Every Coin-part 2

I figured PosterBoy should have a chance to answer the questions surrounding his arrest. We are happy to be able to provide PosterBoy the opportunity to tell his side of the story.

PAC-People are hearing rumors that you were arrested on Friday evening. Wanted to get the straight scoop directly from you.

PB-Henry Matyjewicz was arrested Friday night at 7:30pm, sent to central booking, then sent to Rikers. He was bailed on Sunday night, and was released Monday 2am.

PAC-Explain to everybody what you were doing the night of your arrest.

PB-Tossing back a couple of brewskies and watching Henry Matyjewicz get arrested for art crimes he didn’t commit.

PAC-Were you expecting a police presence at your first "real" exhibition in New York?

PB-First off the work was a live contribution from the Neo-Cons (Poster Boy, Aakash Nihalani, and Ellis Gallagher) to help raise money for Friends We Love. Since the flyer guaranteed Poster Boy’s presence we expected the police to come through.


Look at the piece that was put up. It would’ve been a success either way, but how “ironic” is that? Maybe too ironic. The party would’ve gone a lot smoother without an arrest, but it didn’t hurt the cause. It feels good to exploit the NYPD.

PAC-What were the police's reasons for arresting you?

PB-According to Henry they were trying to find Poster Boy. The plainclothes officers arrived around 7pm, like the flyer said, then started snooping around. They overheard Henry talking about the piece he helped install then arrested him. I reviewed the evidence presented by the NYPD through Henry’s account. They have a some random pics from the Lorimer stop on the L line of some vandalized advertisements and Henry’s grey hoody which is supposedly the same one from the youtube video. So basically they have nothing.

PAC-What is the best thing that's happened to you since being in jail?

PB-Henry’s arrest helped propagate the ideas behind Poster Boy. I hear the new Poster Boy movie is set to come out this summer. I hope it’s a trilogy. Thank you NYPD and Henry.

PAC-Did anyone buy the now notorious "the neocons did it" piece that you were making especially for the exhibition?

PB-No physical work of Poster Boy will ever be sold or privately owned. The piece will be recycled and used for other work.

PAC-In your own words, what does this arrest mean to you and in relation to your work?

PB-More visibility. This will help the public see and understand the issues at hand. It’s unfortunate that Henry was arrested, but there comes a time in a person’s life when their beliefs are put to the test. Henry Matyjewicz passed with flying colors.

PAC-Any last thoughts you might like to ad?

PB-The only thing that could match the NYPD’s shit investigation is the New York Post’s shit reporting.

PB-Of course I’m not surprised. It’s the New York Post.

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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

LEETO Takes Advantage


I was tipped off that LEETO hit the big blank canvas PosterBoy provided a while back and sure enough when I went to the site he had. One may not agree with the content that was provided by LEETO, a quick "throw up" (used by graffiti artists when they are in a spot which is dangerous and don't have time to execute a more intricate piece), but one can't overlook the public interaction and communication happening here. It should be noted that the criminalization of graffiti by the city is responsible for LEETO's inability to carry out something more elegant and earnest in this situation.

I could not be happier with the direction this project has gone. It is a crystal clear image of how the public space should be used and for whom it should be used. Thanks PosterBoy and thanks LEETO for taking the time to talk to us through your environment. We are listening.

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Monday, January 19, 2009

Working Someone Else's Shoes

PosterBoy has been getting amazing web traffic lately and I love it. People are clearly responding to his work and I think it's an amazing opportunity to really push the issues surrounding outdoor advertising's control of the public environment. After all this is about change, and that requires a public consciousness growing. One of the things I've heard him reiterate time and time again is that this project is not his art as much as a form of protest that anyone can participate in. My work happens over public advertising as well so this isn't new territory but I thought I'd try my hand at his process. I gotta tell you it wasn't as easy as it seems on those videos of him. If you make a subway alteration please email it to me and I will post it immediately.

Oddly enough I missed my momma's birthday and she can't do dinner this Friday cause she has a date. Happy birthday momma, I love you. We can do Thursday.

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Monday, January 5, 2009

To This Day, Subway Mural Project Can Still Inspire

In the following NY times article it becomes very clear using public space and art to foster someones connection to their environment is always a good idea. It bridges gaps between the self and community and helps people not only understand themselves in relation to a space but in their ability to transform that space for greater purposes. This is always empowering and often is part of the reason street and graffiti artists do what they do.

I think it's important to take the ramifications of this article very seriously. If community use of public space is beneficial to the residents and therefore the community as a whole, why do we allow the public environment to be over run by advertising?

Some say because it creates much needed revenue for the city. The percentage of city operating costs that advertising covers, much of which goes to private landlords and real estate owners who provide the wall space, is a very small amount compared to overall city budget. Not to mention the question which no one seems to ask, which is how on earth has an entire city become dependent on public advertising revenue to cover even a portion of its operating costs.

Add to this that many Artists and eccentrics don't need an invitation to use the public space as a vehicle for expression, communication and ultimately as a way to understand thier personal relationship to the community. They are willing to do it for free. All the benefits of a community project sponsored by the city happening on a daily basis through individual participation.

It is in fact the health of the city we are talking about here. We are weighing the revenue gained through outdoor advertising against the beneficial process of community art making and civil visual interaction.

Via The New York Times
Joe Fornabaio for The New York Times

From left, Lisa Branch, Nitza Tufino and Kim Ferguson discussed one of the murals at the 86th Street subway station on the Upper West Side.

By MARTIN ESPINOZA
Published: January 5, 2009

When the No. 3 train roars by the 86th Street station on the Upper West Side, the dingy platform becomes the noisiest, if not the most unlikely, museum in the city.

The station is the permanent home of 37 ceramic murals, mounted almost 20 years ago on the walls of the platform and mostly ignored by commuters waiting for the next train.

But every now and then, commuter indifference gives way to curiosity, just long enough for someone to take in a portrait of a not-so-distant Upper West Side past.

There is the mural of subway riders boarding a red No. 2 express train at the 96th Street station nearby, or the two Hasidic men pushing pink baby strollers in front of a Chinese restaurant. In another, two old people inch their way toward an M104 bus.

These are no masterpieces. Most of the young people who created them were troubled or struggling students trying to earn their high school equivalency degree. Were the murals to be removed and sold, they probably would not fetch anywhere near as much as the 200 subway art projects by professional artists commissioned since 1985 by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts for Transit program.

But their value is measured in other ways, especially to the students who created them and a neighborhood that has grown accustomed to them since they were installed in August 1989.

Going on 20 years later, a number of these young people look back on a community art project that left a lasting impression on their lives. For some, it was a turning point. Others say they wish they had left a more personal mark on history. “When I see it now, I see all the love that I put in that work,” said Leeama Scott, 44, who was a teenage immigrant from Trinidad when she worked on the murals.

Some have left the Upper West Side, and some have fled New York City altogether. But wherever they ended up, most have become the subjects they portrayed: the office worker headed downtown, the parent playing with a son or daughter in the park, the community organizer, the teacher.

Guy Monpremier, 43, came to the United States in 1985 to escape political turmoil and violence in his native Haiti. For him and others, the mural project was a chance to explore the world beyond his immediate environment.

At the time, he was attending high school equivalency classes at Grosvenor Neighborhood House, a settlement house on West 105th Street.

Grosvenor, an urban refuge of social service and education programs housed in a bleak rectangular structure that looks more like a compact jail, had been brought into discussions over how to spend $205,000 in amenity financing that had been promised by a developer constructing a high-rise condominium at 84th Street and Broadway. Some of the money went toward the project, which paid for materials and a $4-an-hour stipend for the 17 students who participated.

Carrying 35-millimeter cameras, Mr. Monpremier and the others were dispatched throughout the two-square-mile neighborhood to capture images of landmarks and typical urban scenes. The negatives of the best scenes were then made into slides, and the images projected onto a wall, where they were traced onto paper.

These drawings were transferred in reverse onto 23-by-30-inch linoleum sheets that were then stamped onto large sheets of clay. The large clay images were cut into pieces small enough to fit into kilns and fired, then painted with colored glaze, put back together like puzzle pieces, then finally mounted onto large frames.

Mr. Monpremier, like a number of students involved in the project, had plans to study the arts afterward. He attended Manhattan Community College for a time, but his studies were cut short. He is now director of security for a commercial real estate firm and lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

His contributions to the murals include a Broadway island bench scene, one of two older people getting on the bus and a street-corner view of Grosvenor.

A slight note of melancholy enters Mr. Monpremier’s voice when he recalls that period of his life. He has now invested hopes of a better future in his 10-year-old son, Joshua.

“He’s a good kid, I’m blessed with that,” Mr. Monpremier said. “I hope he’s able to do better than I have, as far as completing a college degree. That’s one thing that I’ve always wanted, as far as completing it. I never really had the energy to do it. But he’s also pushing me to go back.”

Clarisa Ureña started having children when she was 19, three years after she moved out of her parents’ home. She had two by the time she got involved with the mural project.

While Ms. Ureña studied for her high school equivalency exam, her children attended a day care program at Grosvenor. In the afternoons, she labored over a classic scene, the Lincoln Center fountain plaza. She lived one block away, on 106th Street, and Grosvenor had long been a part of her life.

“We had a responsibility, and if you didn’t meet the criteria you were out,” Ms. Ureña said of herself and the other students. “I was not the kind of person who could sit around the apartment.”

Her roles as wife, cook and mother supplanted her early interest in education, until the mural project came along.

Ms. Ureña, who moved to Garner, N.C., almost four years ago, said the project motivated her to go to college. She studied computer graphics and advertising at Bronx Community College, and after having a third child in the early 1990s, she received a bachelor’s degree in art education from City College. For a brief time she taught art to elementary schoolchildren in the South Bronx. In North Carolina, she works for Wake County’s food stamps program.

Mrs. Scott, then Leeama Blugh, attended equivalency classes at Grosvenor during the day and in the evening worked there as an assistant, helping younger children with their homework. She said the project had so inspired her that she thought seriously of pursuing a career in the arts. But her life took different turns. She attended beauty school and worked at various beauty salons in the city. Over the years, she has worked as a home attendant and an office worker on Wall Street. She now works in security.

Mrs. Scott said she had no regrets that her dreams of becoming an artist had faded. “When I look back and see all these things that I did, it makes me feel good,” she said.

Original plans for the mural project called for a less significant role for the students. A professional artist would design the work and hire students to do the manual labor, said Nitza Tufiño, 59, the artist brought in to direct the project and teach the students how to make the tiles. Ms. Tufiño, the daughter of Rafael Tufiño, a prominent Puerto Rican painter and printmaker who died last year, said she viewed the project as an instrument for social change. Having the students work on an assembly line for another artist, for $4 an hour, would have had little impact on their lives, she said.

“How can you ask a young man, who could have $1,000 in his pocket selling drugs, to manufacture plaques that were created by someone else?” Ms. Tufiño said. “Think about what you’re competing against in el barrio.”

Inside her home in South Orange, N.J., Ms. Tufiño has kept dozens of black and white photographs, contact sheets, negatives and slides documenting the mural project. Many of the photos show the students in the Grosvenor workshop, a space no larger than a public school bathroom, drawing, rolling clay and carving linoleum.

Twenty years ago, Sandra Bloodworth, director of the Arts for Transit program, was new to the transportation agency, and the mural project was her first assignment as a supervisor.

“It’s amazing that it’s had such timelessness,” Ms. Bloodworth said. “No one thought anything like that would last. People thought it would be destroyed in a week.”

On a recent visit to the station, with Kim Ferguson and Lisa Branch, two participants who have remained close friends to this day, Ms. Tufiño reflected on the project.

“You know what’s weird?” Ms. Ferguson said as she walked down the platform, pointing to murals she worked on. “I still remember how to do the whole thing.”

Ms. Ferguson worked on the mural depicting commuters boarding the No. 2 train at 96th Street. In another mural, this one made by Ms. Branch, Ms. Ferguson is shown sitting next to two children on a brownstone stoop, wearing a yellow jumpsuit.

Ms. Ferguson, 41, is now a community organizer for the New York City Mission Society’s Minisink Townhouse in Harlem. She said the work she does today is a continuation of the help given to her at a critical time in her life.

Ms. Branch, 40, gave birth to her first child, Timothy, seven months ago, and until recently worked as a receptionist for Bear Stearns through a temp agency.

She brought Timothy along for the station visit, dutifully covering his ears every time a train roared past. In an interview before the visit, Ms. Branch said she had recently seen the tile murals from a passing No. 2 train.

“I said, ‘Wow, 20 years later and they’re still beautiful, just like when we put them up there,’ ” she said. “That’s something to show my son when he’s of the age to know what that is. So I can say, ‘Look, your mommy did that.’ ”

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Friday, January 2, 2009

Attention Passengers! To Your Right, This Trip Is About to Become Trippy

New York Times Article


“Masstransiscope,” a piece by the artist and filmmaker Bill Brand, can be glimpsed from northbound Q and B trains nearing the Manhattan Bridge.

Artist and filmmaker Bill Brand, created Masstransiscope in the late 70's in an attempt to reverse the cinematic convention of the image moving past the viewer, instead moving the viewer past the image. Initially "He wanted to change the images regularly, making a movie, in essence, that subway riders would see only in little segments of 20 seconds or so, like a crazily attenuated version of the serials that once ran in theaters." Slightly overambitious, this idea was dropped for a simpler version of the original concept.

No less interesting, this piece of work is a fine example of what happens when residents are allowed access to their public environment. These days Arts for Transit regulates which artists are allowed to access the NYC subway system and they do a good job of it, but it should be noted 'Bill’s work happened before Arts for Transit even came about. And that’s why it really is a part of New York history.'

These days not only would Bill find himself navigating through a much more complex process of application and permission in order to carry out his idea, but he would also be competing with an aggressive advertising platform which has come to dominate the MTA's visual landscape. Alongside the addition of hundreds of traditional platform level posters, recent advertising additions include, projection units, adhesive wall signs, advertising on the outside of train cars, advertising in the windows of train cars, digital ads on the sides of buses, on the backs of metrocards, as well as the plan to create ads using the same methods Mr. Brand used for his artwork.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

New Actions And Training

If anything, I've found that a single act of participation can ignite a lifetime of interaction in the public. With that in mind, as well as a large project I am cooking up with PosterBoy, I have realized the need to personally introduce people to the physical act of reclaiming public space. The invisible hand which seems to say that public interaction is off limits to the average citizen, is actually just that, invisible and ultimately non-existent. Once you have committed an act of social rearrangement you realize that you are truly free to do what you want with little to no consequence.

That said, a now friend of mine who we will call John, asked me how he could do his own public billboard advertisements illegally. I having never actually changed a billboard and thought the first step would be getting our hands dirty, realizing that with a little bit of fearlessness and the right tools you can pretty much do anything. We set out last Monday afternoon to tackle three of my favorite public advertising venues for takeover, public phone kiosks, NPA outdoor street level billboards, and subway platform advertisements. I produced two phone kiosk pieces, two subway platform pieces, and prepared the paint for two NPA outdoor ad removals.

The first thing we did was paint over the NPA ads, which John was slightly nervous about but finished without hesitation. The next ad we hit was a phone kiosk which he removed without batting an eye and on the downtown side of oncoming traffic. I explained that it was slightly more dangerous because a cop car driving up the street would be much more likely to stop him. He scoffed at the idea and removed the ad with me watching out. The last was the subway platform ads which he refused to do because it was mid afternoon. This was not such a bad call on his part because subway platforms are much less crowded late at night and you are less likely to see police. Nonetheless I showed him how it could be done and in the future I'm sure John would have no problem attempting this on his own.

If anyone has any interest in running through the gauntlet, I am more than happy to provide the tools and materials for a fun afternoon on the streets.

Two different phone kiosk pieces, one posted by each of us

(detail of first)

NPA outdoor site we both painted over

Subway platform install which I did and John filmed

Subway Platform detail

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Subway Window Ads Alarm Some Riders

The fact that this is all being promoted under the guise that it is to cut down on Scratchiti is a little perplexing.
By Jennifer 8. Lee Via The New York Times City Room.

Coca-Cola ads are placed over the windows of subway cars in a pilot program to discourage scratched graffiti. (Photo: New York City Transit)
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority continues to find new ways to rent its subway real estate to advertisers. Joining the tunnels, station stairs, columns, subway insides, subway outsides, station turnstiles: subway windows.

As Gothamist pointed out last week, red Coca-Cola ads are now covering a number of subway windows, as part of a 30-day pilot program. They are being used on a single eight-car A train where four of the cars have ads covering their large windows (though not their door panes). None of the windows on the other four cars are covered.

Despite the M.T.A. budget shortfall, transit officials say that advertising revenue is not the main motivation for the program. Instead, the sprawling ads have a practical purpose. The first is to reduce what officials call “scratchiti,” or scratched graffiti on the windows.

Scratchiti has become more popular over the past decade as more cleaning agents were developed to fight traditional graffiti. Scrachitti is a major vandalism problem in the subways, costing the system more than $2.5 million a year to replace the glass and covering it with protective Mylar. One man was arrested last month for scratchitti after he was caught in the act by a cameraphone.

Paul J. Fleuranges, a spokesman for New York City Transit, said the agency hoped that the film, called Scotchcal, would cut down on the frequency of scratchitti. The vinyl graphic film, made by 3M, is widely used to wrap buses, because a it allows a full image to be printed on the outside, while the little perforated holes allows people (in theory) to look outside.

The other benefit transit officials are hoping for is that the film will save on energy costs, as the covered windows reduce the amount of hot sun that enters subway cars.

“The car equipment people have for a long time sought to use tinted windows in an attempt to cut down on that ’sun soak’ effect; just like tinted windows reduce the warmth of the sun on a passenger vehicle and help keep the car cooler and assist in the A.C. cooling the car more efficiently,” Mr. Fleuranges wrote in an e-mail message.

Of course, this aspect of the pilot, given that it is December, will be harder to test.

Mr. Fleuranges said the pilot program is actually free to the M.T.A., because Coca-Cola paid for the ads, and CBS Outdoor, which handles subway advertising, threw in the labor.

This Coca-Cola window ad campaign — which started last week — has caught the attention of bloggers, and at least one rider wrote an alarmed letter to the M.T.A. (Others have ranted about the decrease in light in the cars.)

And because you can see out of the windows but not necessarily into the car, a number of people have pointed out the potential security hazards. It seems like a fertile place to get mugged if you are the only one in a subway car late at night. How will the police know to rescue you?

Mr. Fleuranges said that the Police Department’s transit bureau had been involved in pre-pilot discussions and had viewed the material after it was applied. An e-mail message to the Police Department on the topic has not yet been returned.

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Sunday, October 26, 2008

The Future To Come And The Future That's Here

The language advertising companies use is often indicative of their motives. When Titan Media declares that their new digital bus ads are "bright and unavoidable..", it gives you a good sense of what their intentions are. And when outdoor advertising is talked about as being "bright and unavoidable", the average citizen should realize that this means they will be absorbing these messages even if they think they are hardened New Yorkers trained at keeping their eyes glued to the pavement as they pass through their public environment. We should not have to physically alter the way we move and visualize our public space in order to avoid contact with the "bright and unavoidable". Instead we should demand our visual environment back from outdoor advertising and perpetrate its removal in any way possible.

from Gothamist John Del Signore


The MTA is currently testing out new digital screens that display ads on the sides of buses running on the M23 route. The screens, which use GPS technology to change according to each neighborhood's demographic, are being installed by New York-based ad company Titan Worldwide; the company's website declares that the 12-foot displays "are bright and unavoidable and will enable advertisers to target mass audiences by time of day, block, zip-code, demography and ethnicity." Yay!

As Titan's marketing director tells the Post, "In the morning, we can show Starbucks, and on the way home from work, a Budweiser ad." You can see where this is going; Bugaboo ads for Park Slope, Rohypnol for the Meatpacking District, and in Williamsburg, flashy ads for Neighborhoodies and machetes. The M23's test run currently sports ads for Oreo, Sleepy's, Coca-Cola and Sprite; a spokesman says that if successful, they'll install them on about 200 buses next year. Then in 2010, up in your cerebral cortex! Click through for a video of the Dunkin Donuts bus ad in action.

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Saturday, October 18, 2008

The View From Inside the Ad-Wrapped Bus

VIA Ban Billboard Blight
Ever wonder what it’s like to look out the window of one of those buses shrink-wrapped in advertising? This photo gives a pretty good idea. But maybe it doesn’t matter, because you’ll be glued to the monitor running video ads inside the bus, or mesmerized by the print ads covering most available surfaces. After all, by riding the bus you’ve voluntarily joined a captive audience, haven’t you? And where does it say you have the right to enter a public space without being confronted by a 360-degree assault of messages to buy products and services?

The MTA and other public transit agencies will eagerly tell you that selling public property as ad space is the alternative to higher fares. So why don’t we wrap the MTA headquarters building, which towers above its downtown surroundings and offers a panoramic view of the city? Why shouldn’t MTA executives and board members have the same kind of view as the riders inside the bus?

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Friday, October 17, 2008

The Train Is Coming. And With It, More Ads

VIA The New York Times

STEPHANIE CLIFFORD Published: October 16, 2008

THE New York City transit system is adding a new site for advertisements: the interior of subway tunnels.
Sam Chase for the History Channel

A History Channel ad covering a shuttle train in Manhattan.

David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News

Commercial images are projected in the tunnel during a train ride in Los Angeles

Starting next spring with the 42nd Street-Times Square shuttle, passengers will see advertising outside the windows as the train travels between stations. The messages will look rather like jumpy 15-second TV ads.

The tunnel advertising is part of an ambitious Metropolitan Transportation Authority plan to convert much of its real estate into advertising space. In addition to the tunnel ads, it will sell space on turnstiles, digital screens inside stations, projections against subway station walls, and panels on the outside of subway cars.

Advertisers are eager for any new way to capture consumers’ attention. The History Channel, which started to advertise on subway panels this month, wanted to get “buzz not only with viewers and consumers of our content, but buzz within the advertising community and buzz with key business partner influentials in this market,” said Chris Moseley, senior vice president for marketing at the channel.

And the authority wants revenue to help it cover its projected $900 million budget shortfall next year.

“In light of the fiscal difficulties that the M.T.A.’s facing, we have set out to basically look under every rock for ways that we can cut costs and raise revenue,” said Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the authority.

But some groups say the extension of advertising space is troubling.

“The subways are not a wholly noncommercial site already,” said Robert Weissman, managing director of Commercial Alert, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington. “But there’s a big difference between signage and traditional billboards, and the new digital media and turnstile wraps and other innovations.”

Mr. Weissman added, “It just contributes to the overwhelming assault on people and their everyday lives that makes it increasingly challenging to escape commercial messaging.”

While the authority has long sold panels in the trains and billboards at the stations to advertisers, it began converting other parts of stations into advertising space only about a decade ago.

CBS Outdoor, which handles ad space in the stations, began selling entire stations to advertisers about 10 years ago, letting them wrap poles and put graphics on the floors.

More recently, it has offered stairs and the full interior of trains to advertisers for a technique known as a “wrap.”

And this year, it is getting even more creative.

“Advertisers, especially in this environment, are looking to do something different and be noticed,” said Jodi Senese, the executive vice president for marketing for CBS Outdoor. “When something is new, clearly there’s an opportunity to make a big splash,” she said.

This week, the company began testing advertising on a large display, almost the size of a movie screen, mounted above a passageway by the 7 train in Times Square.

Because the New York subway runs 24 hours a day, it is difficult to put ads on the far side of subway tracks. Consequently, CBS is considering projecting images across the track. They will be similar to ads that are projected onto station walls, which CBS began about two years ago. There is a projection ad for Asics in Union Square, in the passageway between the N, Q, R and W lines and the Lexington Avenue line, and one for the Navy at Grand Central, in the corridor to the shuttle.

Both the arms of turnstiles and the entire turnstile structures are available to advertisers.

And starting in 2009, CBS will sell advertisers exterior panels — thinner versions of the horizontal advertisements that buses carry — on the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and shuttle trains. These panels are already in place on some 1, 3, 4, 7 and shuttle trains, where the History Channel is the first advertiser to use them. It is promoting its “Cities of the Underworld” series.

The History Channel, owned by A&E Television Networks, also covered the exterior of the Times Square shuttle with advertising, which the transportation authority is considering allowing for other advertisers.

The channel’s media agency, Horizon Media, worked with CBS to persuade the transportation authority to allow the panels and exterior wrap, even creating a miniature model of the shuttle to show authority officials how it would look.

“We’re not just marketing the show in a traditional way, we’re creating an immersive kind of experience,” Ms. Moseley said. The tunnel ads are scheduled to be installed by spring 2009, and will be handled by SideTrack Technologies, a company in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It lines subway tunnels with strips of light-emitting diodes that are window height.

“We have a way of projecting multiple images on the side of a tunnel wall as a train moves from one station to the next station,” said Rob Walker, the president of SideTrack. The company shows about 360 images over a 15-second period and times the display of the images to the speed of a given train.

Mr. Walker compared it to a children’s flip book, where static images in rapid succession give the impression of movement.

“It’s just basic animation, but we can manipulate the images, we can change the ads, so every train that goes by can see a different ad,” he said.

The windows light up as if there were a television screen outside the window. SideTrack installed the system in the Los Angeles and London subways this year, and retailers including Target, Microsoft and Warner Brothers have used it.

An earlier version of the system, which uses printed panels instead of L.E.D. projections, is being used in Boston and San Francisco. Those require that workers go into the tunnels to put up the panels, which makes the ads difficult to install and change.

It will probably cost around $95,000 for a full month of ads in a tunnel, Mr. Walker said, but said that advertisers could book the system for short-term projects.

Mr. Koenigsberg of Horizon said that a prime outdoor billboard usually costs six figures, “so that kind of number doesn’t sound out of whack.”

He said he was interested in the tunnel advertising technology, but would want to ensure that subway riders wanted to see moving ads during their rides.

“The last thing you want to do is have inefficient waste in putting a message in front of someone where they’re not receptive to it,” he said.

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Monday, October 6, 2008

Slice and Dice NY Magazine

One man’s vandalism is another’s political art. Just ask Poster Boy, the Matisse of subway-ad mash-ups.

By Brian Raftery Published Oct 5,2008


(Photo: Christopher Anderson)

It’s a Thursday evening at the 23rd Street C/E station, and Nicolas Cage is undergoing an involuntarily face-lift. As commuters wait for their train, the subway-art manipulator known as Poster Boy stands in front of an ad for Cage’s Bangkok Dangerous, razor in hand, and traces a circle around the actor’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Cage’s face peels away as easily as a trading-card sticker, and Poster Boy carries it down the platform, where he’s been hacking away at a hot-pink poster promoting MTV’s high-school musical The American Mall. He’s been rearranging swatches of color, text, and body parts to alter the movie’s title (now The American Fall) and tagline (“Love and Dreams for Resale”). Poster Boy slices out the Mall moppet’s head, replacing it with Cage’s appropriately stunned expression. The entire process takes less than ten minutes.

Since January, the 25-year-old has manipulated about 200 underground posters, turning MTA stations into his own public galleries. His pieces are conceived on the spot, and while most subway-poster vandals limit themselves to all-caps obscenities, Poster Boy’s improvised mash-ups recall both the cut-and-paste aesthetic of old punk-show fliers and the fake ads that appeared in circa-seventies Mad magazine: In his hands, AT&T skyscrapers are turned into flaming World Trade Center towers and Heath Ledger becomes a ghostly anti-drug pitchman. Most of his work disappears quickly—MTA employees have even ripped down his work before he’s finished—but you can see it on his sporadically updated Flickr account.

The defacing of posters doesn’t sound particularly lofty, but Poster Boy—who, for obvious reasons, wishes to remain anonymous (vandalism is, after all, a crime)—has intentions that are surprisingly high-minded. The die-hard Fight Club fan hopes to start a decentralized art movement, one where anyone can claim to be Poster Boy. “No copyright, no authorship,” he says. “A social thing, as opposed to being an artist making things for bored rich people to hang above their couch.” That such a crusade might encourage vandalism doesn’t bother him. “Where I’m from, if you go by the book, it’s a very slow process to get what you want,” he says.

Poster Boy is reluctant to talk about his background, but a few details slip out: He was raised in a one-parent home in an East Coast neighborhood he compares to the South Bronx. He spent some of his teen years stealing cars and shooting out windows: “I’ve gotten arrested for a couple of little things.” He enrolled in community college, where he was exposed to Noam Chomsky, Lao Tzu, and George Orwell. “Books like Animal Farm and 1984 sparked something,” he says. “A new sense of independence, where I felt, I should take control of my environment.

In January of this year, after dropping out of a reputable art school, he began loitering around the cavernous subway stations that link his Bushwick apartment to his Chelsea-art-studio day job. “I was playing with the posters, cutting them up, ’cause I have to use razors a lot at my job,” he says. His earliest works were hastily assembled, full of floating heads and juxtaposed slogans. But by the spring he was incorporating social critiques, rearranging the Iron Man logo into IRAN=NAM, and altering an NYPD recruitment-drive poster to read MY NYPD KILLED SEAN BELL. “No matter what I do to the piece,” he says, “as long as I did something to those advertisements and that saturation, it’s political. It’s anti-media, anti–established art world.”

New York City has a long history of reactive ad-jamming, from Ron English’s illegal billboard pasteups to the “stickeriti” artist known as Violator of the Regime, who last fall altered nearly 30 subway ads for the CW’s Reaper, replacing the show’s cast members with twisted Photoshop caricatures of Bush, Cheney, and Rice (the show’s tagline, “Meet Satan’s Biggest Tools,” remained intact). But the ubiquity of digital cameras and Flickr streams means that artists like Poster Boy or the Decapitator—a London-based ad hack who replaces celebrities’ heads with bloody stumps—can instantly take their regional agitprop to a worldwide audience, an impossible feat for English in the eighties. “If we did [a billboard] in Texas, only the people that commuted down I-35 that day would see the thing,” English says. “Unless we were clever enough to get it on the international news, we weren’t gonna broaden our audience.”

Poster Boy’s prodigious, easily accessible output has made him a leading figure among the next wave of media manipulators—a sort of Turk 182 with a 50-cent blade. But in order to remain viable, he has to keep producing new pieces, which puts him at an ever-increasing risk of getting pinched. (For now, he’s not especially high on the MTA’s list of priorities: “Vandalism of our property is illegal, and we prosecute to the fullest extent of the law,” says spokesperson Aaron Donovan. “That being said, the problem to date has been minimal.”) At the 23rd Street station, he works quickly, pausing only when the trains arrive or depart. “While the train’s here, I scope,” he says. “Once it pulls out, I start cutting.”

Slice and Dice


Presto, change-o: A sampling of Poster Boy's creations.

He stares at the American Fall piece. Cage’s visage may be grotesque, but the poster needs one more inspired detail to set it apart. Poster Boy walks down the platform to collect pieces of sticky vinyl he cut from another poster and begins converting the neck of a guitar into a giant penis. He’s only halfway finished when he’s halted by a voice: “Stop!” The crowd parts, revealing four hard-charging NYPD officers. “You got ratted out,” one officer says, pointing to a Tropic Thunder poster that’s been defaced with a homophobic slur. Apparently, a commuter saw Poster Boy at work and mistakenly I.D.’d him as the culprit. He spends a few minutes pleading his case—he’s opposed to such sloppily executed epithets, for philosophical and aesthetic reasons. After taking his razor, the cops let him off with a warning.

Advice heeded, he hops on the next C train. As the door closes, he shakes his head. “I did a bad job of turning the guitar into a penis,” he says. “That’s my only regret: a poorly cut-up phallus.”

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Thursday, October 2, 2008

MTA Unveils First Ad-Wrapped Subway

from Gothamist Jen Carlson


Photos via the MTA and the History Channel.



Behold! This morning the MTA unveiled the first "full advertising wrap of the exterior and interior of a New York City subway." Synergy alert! The ad is for the History Channel's Cities of the Underworld, which follows urban explorer Don Wildman on his adventures beneath major cities. Adventures happening ever further down from the ones New Yorkers experience on the 42nd Street Shuttle.

The underground ad campaign is a bit underwhelming, but it is in an effort to further expand the MTA's advertising revenue base, and in addition they'll also be testing digital advertising on buses and in-car commuter rails. The MTA noted that they "will realize over $125 million in 2008 in advertising revenues. If these new initiatives are implemented on a permanent base, the MTA expects these revenues to grow substantially." Which could only help at this point.

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Thursday, September 25, 2008

Poster Boy Takes On The World

As per usual I'm not happy that the ads these images manipulate are still shining through the creative voice of Poster Boy, but when I think of all the ads that were destroyed to make each of these pictures I do get a warm fuzzy feeling deep inside my heart.

Via Animal New York

The underground, subway ad remixing artist known as Poster Boy has been on a bit of a rampage lately after taking a brief hiatus. In a new series of alterations, the culture jamming artisan takes shots at the media, fast food, bad shows on Fox and even gentrification—in one instance giving a movie poster for Nicholas Cage's latest box office bomb Bangkok Dangerous a much more fitting facelift considering a certain Brooklyn neighborhood's increasing popularity. Collaborator Aakash Nihalani rejoins Poster Boy, attacking the insides of subway cars too. Click below for the creative cluster of constructive vandalism.




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