Quarantine Chat

I have been working on a project called Talk To Me which refurbishes old NYC payphones to become serendipitous points of communication between strangers. Dispersed throughout the 5 boroughs, TTM phones will sit idle until a passerby decides to activate the network by picking up one of the receivers. Once that happens, the other phones in the network begin to ring with the hopes that another passing stranger will answer the call. It is a simple concept meant to bring strangers into communication and link disparate communities throughout the 5 boroughs.

Since the Covid-19 Pandemic hit, the project has been put on indefinite hold as I wait to see how our public presence and willingness to interact with one another changes over time. I hope that eventually the project will make sense again and that I will be able to implement it some time next year.

In the meantime, Download Quarantine Chat [HERE] and talk to a stranger once a day while you are in self isolation. It isn't completely serendipitous since you have to sign up to participate, but its an interesting opportunity to explore the power of stranger interaction and what it means to reach out to your neighbors, or be there when your neighbors reach out to you.

A Project Salvages and Installs No-Cost Payphones to Revive a Fading Technology

VIA: Hyperallergic

DETROIT — One of the authenticating moves that anchored the 2005 movie Brick in the neo-noir genre was the omnipresence of payphones as the means of telephonic communication. Even as cell phones have outdated the maintenance of landlines in the home, we still pantomime the technology of archaic dialing patterns and receivers, indicating that in our mobile-technology era, there is something fundamental about payphones. The Portland, Oregon-based artist Karl Anderson would tend to agree. More [HERE]

Guerrilla Girls Target MoMA Trustees With Ties to Jeffrey Epstein in an Ad Takeover

VIA: Hyperallergic

“Advice to the Museum of Modern Art about BIG donors with BIG ties to Jeffery Epstein,” reads a poster that appeared on a phone booth across the street from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Manhattan this past weekend. It continued: “MoMA should Kick Leon Black & Glenn Dubin off its Board immediately, drape the Black and Dubin Galleries in black, & put up wall labels explaining why.” The ad is signed by the veteran activist group Guerrilla Girls, who added their signature gorilla mask logo at the bottom of the poster. “The Guerrilla Girls volunteer to help write those labels,” the group adds. More [HERE]

On Crowded London Streets, Councils Fight a Flood of Phone Boxes

VIA: NY Times

LONDON — The British telephone box is not dead yet. In parts of central London, a box stands sentinel every 100 feet — and if phone companies got their way, they’d plant one every 50 feet.

More [HERE]

Sophie Calle - Double Game "Phone Booth" 1994

I had been planning to attend the Creative Time, Sophie Calle project at the Greenwood Cemetary last weekend for a while. I am excited by participatory work that uses art to fuel a connection with one another, and in this case a beautiful part of NYC. As luck would have it, my friend Luna Park reminded me of a small phonebooth project Sophie did back in the mid 90's. In it she is challenged by Paul Auster to...

"Pick one spot in the city and begin to think of it as yours. It doesn't matter where, it doesn't matter what. A street corner, a subway entrance, a tree in the park. Take on this place as your responsibility. Keep it clean. Beautify it. Think of it as an extension of who you are, as a part of your identity. take as much pride in it as you would your own home."

I adore this sentiment and motivate my work on similar grounds. I really believe that by interacting with, and acting upon the city, we become better stewards of public space and with it grow deeply invested in our cities. It's like a relationship in that way. The more you give, the more the city gives back and a rich public life is the result of a deeply engaged population. For a bit more info on Sophie's project [HERE]

These New Yorkers Are Covering Advertisements with Art

In case you didnt know, working over advertising to demand a more democratic use of our shared public space along with the ideas contained within your message itself, is a thing. AiAP is one of a few public projects making sure thats the case and you should know about what they are doing. 

VIA: The Nation

photo by Luna Park

More [HERE]

NYC Phone Booths Are Being Transformed Into Feminist Guerrilla Art With 'Resistance Is Female'

artwork by Sara Enranthal

In the AiAP model, the Resistance is Female campaign has taken to using NYC phonebooths as thier preferred method of cultural dissemination. As you can see from this photograph, they still need to figure out where to put the trash they remove once they are finished installing but I am happy to see thier message getting coverage on Gothamist, and the nightly news with Greg Mocker. More [HERE]

Art in Ad Places CBC Radio Interview

I am not going to even put a picture with this post cause I dont want you to be distracted from this LINK to a CBC radio interview with the curators RJ Rushmore and Caroline Caldwell. In it the two describe a yearlong project to question outdoor advertisings messaging, motivations and prominent placement in our public lives and it is simply a must listen for anyone who visits this site. 

More info on the AiAP website [HERE]

London’s new high-tech phone boxes don’t work very well

VIA: Arstechnica.ukhttps://arstechnica.co.uk

London's new phone boxes are experiencing some technical issues. According to some reports, about 100 of the new kiosks—which were built by Alan Sugar's company Amscreen—have been installed, but they are buggy, hard to use, and in some cases can't connect to the Internet. More [HERE]

A Guerrilla Campaign Is Replacing Ads with Art Around New York City

2017 is looking to be a great year already with the launch of AiAP (Art in Ad Places). RJ Rushmore and Caroline Caldwell have spearheaded an ambitious yearlong project that aims to make a sustained critique of outdoor advertising and its deleterious effects a part of our day to day conversations. I will wait till the project is further along to give my full analysis and critique, (reserved for the deserving and not meant to come off punitively) but suffice to say I am very excited about what they are doing and have high hopes for their unique approach to bringing this issue to the forefront of public consciousness. Having spoken to both of RJ and Caroline before this project began to take shape, I know there will be some heavy hitters joining the fray by participating in AiAP and I look forward to hearing the reasons they have lent thier work to such a potentially contentious issue. Until then, keep your eyes on the work of these two activist curators and expect the ad takeover movement in New York to see a renewed interest and vigor. 

VIA: Hyperallergic

Art in Ad Places will install a new work by a different artist in a payphone kiosk every week this year.
As flowers bloomed last spring, a billboard advertising $1,000 off a Brazilian butt lift popped up outside artist Caroline Caldwell’s Brooklyn apartment. It pictured a giant, airbrushed ass in a skimpy bikini against a beach background — an image Caldwell had to look at every day. “I laughed it off at first, but the billboard was designed to make me feel self-conscious, and I got tired of it,” Caldwell told Hyperallergic. “I became determined to fill my life with art that would make people feel anything else.” More [HERE]

Google Is Transforming NYC's Payphones Into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

VIA: The Village Voice

At six-five, Bill de Blasio is usually considerably taller than his conversation partners. But on a cold day in February, the mayor of New York City was on the corner of Third Avenue and 16th Street, interfacing with a nine-and-a-half-foot-tall slab, all sleek curves of metal and glass, that had recently appeared on the sidewalk outside the Mariella Pizza shop. The mayor was testing the monolith's local expertise — did it know the location of the pre-kindergarten program nearest to his Park Slope home? The machine passed the quiz, and, the mayoral mugging concluded, de Blasio turned to the microphone. More [HERE]

LinkNYC's free gigabit WiFi officially launches, we go hands-on

This isn't directly outdoor advertising related but I think its worth knowing about regardless. LinkNYC is in the process of rapidly replacing NYC's phonebooths with thier own street furniture that will bring incredibly fast free wifi, amongst other things. Having spoken to the CTO, I know the motivation behind this infrastructure initiative is being done with NYC's best interest in mind and the benefits to the average citizen will be widespread. Thought like all public infrastructure these days, the funding to make this initiative viable will come from advertising. One can only hope that because the advertising will be piped in via a digital screen, some of that real estate will make it back into the hands of the public whose ever present gaze is what makes this revenue stream viable in the first place. 

VIA: Engadget

A month ago, we were hot on LinkNYC's free gigabit WiFi hotspots when they kicked off beta testing. Today, the organization is officially launching its payphone replacement hotspots (or Links, for short) --- and with that, it's turning on their integrated tablets for the first time. That means you'll be able to do a lot more than just tap into blazing fast WiFi from the Links. You can also browse the web, get directions with Google Maps, and make free VoIP calls to anywhere in America. After testing out one of the tablets briefly, I can say one thing for sure: New Yorkers won't miss their dirty old payphones at all. More [HERE]

New Yorkers to soon get ‘super-fast,’ free public Wi-Fi throughout the city

Link NYC is rolling out as we speak and bringing super fast WiFi, plus free calls and phone charging, along with other bells and whistles to NYC in 2016. The new units will replace the old phone booth infrastructure that has become so outdated over the past 5-10 years, bringing a refreshed look to the streets along with all of that high tech. I must say I am quite excited to see these units up and running in the same way people must have been excited to see phones being placed on the street, whenever that was. Unlike the phone booths in NYC, running these digital kiosks will not be free and to offset the cost of installation and upkeep, LinkNYC will be running digital video and still ads. There is talk of renewed OOH business models which will make the advertising more local, allow smaller businesses to participate and generally make these kiosks less obtrusive than thier older counterparts, but I remain skeptical. Only time will tell. 

VIA: Metro NYC

One New York company is hoping to link the city that never sleeps to a level of connectivity never done before — and all for free. More [HERE]

SPECTER AND GLOWING ABSTRACTIONS ON YOUR WAY DOWN INTO THE SUBWAY

Here's a nice piece on Spectre's recent ad takeover work. Love what he is up to.

VIA: Brooklyn Street Art

Yes, you were expecting an ad. Maybe one from News Channel 3 and charming Chuck and beautiful Belinda and that wacky weather guy and the whole 6 O’clock News Team. Instead, you got a glowing abstraction, a few seconds of calm on your way down the stairs into the subway. Artists continue to take over the ad space that continues to take over our public space, and these new backlit missives are from Specter. More [HERE]

Spending Time With Friends

The other day I went out walking the city with a few friends, including one very special Spaniard I know from Madrid. We each installed a few pieces and then had a little dinner at my place. No one took it too seriously but below are some of the varying results. 

Irina 

 Cash 4

 Jordan Seiler

Spectre

New Work By Spectre in NYC

 Spectre continues to use NYC public advertising to frame his current works.

NYC now has hundreds of ad beacons in phone booths (update: mayor orders them removed)

I've been seeing strange things happening to NY phonebooths over the past year or so. Suddenly a booth would appear, wrapped in a piece of sheet metal with a large sticker ad adhered to the entire three sided surface. It was strange because the installation covered what were three regular and working advertising boxes, for seemingly no reason. Well that reason has been revealed to be the installation of a Gimbal beacon capable of communicating with your smart phone and collecting passive data used to build a user profile. I'm glad to finally know why these strange phonebooths have started appearing and sad to know its part of a larger push to make advertising more effective, and invasive. 

VIA: Engadget

Buzzfeed has learned that New York City allowed hundreds of bluetooth beacons to be installed without public consultation, a decision that has roused the ire of privacy groups. Outdoor ad outfit Titan installed around 500 Gimbal beacons in phone booths around Manhattan, skirting normal red tape by saying they were deployed for maintenance purposes only. However, it admitted it's also using them to decide when to rotate ad panels and recently pushed smartphone ads to Tribeca Film Festival participants. The devices can also pick up location and time data, though Titan told the NY Daily News that it is "absolutely, categorically not" doing so unless users opt in and install a third-party app. More [HERE]

Ankles Phonebooth Takeover Video

Ankles just put a short video up on his site that features some phone booth advertising takeover work in Adelaide Australia. The video is interspersed with his other graffiti work almost as B-roll, and I like how it shows the crossover between types of public space work being practiced today. Enjoy more of Ankles work [HERE]

Random Projects in Perth, WA

LENT/TIME Perth 2014

I was recently in Perth, Western Australia for the PUBLIC festival put on by FORM. I was asked to come as part of Re+Public, a side project to PublicAdCampaign exploring our digital commons. I can't go to another country to do a digital mural and not get my hands dirty making new keys, and work, in bus shelters. Big thanks to Kid Zoom and Stormie Mills for being amazing artists and friends while I was in town.

For this quick takeover I spelled out the words LENT TIME using 4 double sided bus shelters, on the busy St Georges Terrace. The lettering was intentionally abstract with the hopes that the images stood out as random designs, before being understood together as a word. In one direction the viewer read LENT and the other TIME, a comment on the short duration that the work would likely be up.

LENT/TIME Perth 2014

LENT/TIME Perth 2014

LENT/TIME Perth 2014

LENT/TIME Perth 2014

LENT/TIME Perth 2014

LENT/TIME Perth 2014

LENT/TIME Perth 2014

LENT/TIME Perth 2014

LENT/TIME Perth 2014

I then did a quick run of phonebooths along the same large street. Each phonebooth had its advertisement removed and was then photographed. This photograph was then installed several days later at the same location much like the Echo project. It was in fact Kid Zoom who coined the name Echo project and so I found it fitting to do something similar in his home town.

Echo #1 - Perth 2014

Echo #2 - Perth 2014

Echo #3 - Perth 2014

RFP To Revamp NYC Payphone Infrastructure For The Digital Age

this RFP from the NYC DoITT and found out there are big changes to the NYC Pay phone landscape finally making it down the pipes. I suggest taking a full look at the RFP below as there are good things for the city and bad. For instance a good thing is more than 50% of revenue and 5% of total advertising space must be given to the city, which I believe is up from previous arrangements made with Titan media and the other 9 companies that still retain contracts. In fact those contracts end this October, which is why this RFP is coming out now. A not so good thing about this request is that it requires the pay phone infrastructure to grow so that WiFi connectivity can blanket the city more uniformly than pay phone infrastructure does. With this growth comes more advertising and the number and ubiquity of advertising on our streets will grow due to this effort.

 

THE CITY OF NEW YORK

OFFICE OF THE MAYOR

NEW YORK, NY 10007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 1, 2014

CONTACT: pressoffice@cityhall.nyc.gov, (212) 788-2958

No. 193

       NEW YORK CITY ISSUES REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS TO BUILD

CITYWIDE WI-FI NETWORK AND STATE-OF-THE-ART INFORMATION HUBS

New public communication points to be distributed across the five boroughs to provide free Wi-Fi, free calling to 911 and 311, and at least $17.5 million in annual city revenue

NEW YORK—New York City, through its Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT), issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the creation of a robust, citywide network of Internet hotspots that will constitute one of the largest free Wi-Fi networks in the country, greatly increasing access to broadband connectivity across the five boroughs. By replacing the aging network of public pay telephones with state-of-the-art public connection points, the city aims to transform the physical streetscape—and New Yorkers’ access to information—while also creating new local jobs for the development, servicing and maintenance of the structures.

“This administration has committed to making New York City work better for every community, and this RFP for free outdoor Wi-Fi is a down payment on that promise,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “For years, the question was, ‘What to do with payphones?’ and now we have an answer. By using a historic part of New York’s street fabric, we can significantly enhance public availability of increasingly-vital broadband access, invite new and innovative digital services, and increase revenue to the city—all at absolutely no cost to taxpayers.”

“The digital age holds great potential to better deliver services, and by reimaging 20^th Century payphones as 21^st Century connection points, we’re making broadband access more equitable and accessible to every New Yorker, said Counsel to the Mayor, Maya Wiley. “DoITT is leading the way for a more wired city. I commend the agency for its work on this initiative, as well as the hundreds of individuals from across the city and country that have provided valuable feedback as we crafted this solicitation.”

Full RFP download [HERE]