taking the balls out of graffiti, or: popularized public photo albums

walking through new york city, you have to admit: most graffiti is crap. there are some great artists out there (banksy, roadsworth are my two favs), but you never seem to see them anywhere. roadsworth was just charged with up to $265,000 in potential fines for vandalism, so i understand the fear of getting caught- vandalism takes bravery after all.

but not anymore. activating public spaces with artwork now takes little more than a cell phone with a camera, and some clever stickers. blockies has developed an ingenious system for posting photographs on any public space, while all the viewers need to receive them is a cell phone.

a clever teenager takes a photograph of a pile of dog poop, a beautiful floral arrangement, or a strange old man and sticks a small sticker with a blockies code on a trashcan, bathroom stall, or convenience store wall. other similarly enabled techno-people can then send a simple text message with the sighted code to nyc@blockies.com, and are able to see the originally posted photo image. once the code is in place, other clever people can take more pictures and add them on to the existing code, creating virtual, collaborative photo albums in the middle of public spaces, with a minimum of public damage, and no bravery needed.

see also the earlier post on grafedia for a similar, though more complicated idea.

idea thanks to reg posting on smart mobs