Thoughts on design and urbanism from a roman face name.

The folks over at Eyebeam (you remember them; they held a high profile competition for a new facility just as the air was being let out of the internet bubble) have launched a new project that tracks street ‘memes’ (via Kottke). The most interesting (and useful) aspect of it is being able to upload photos from phones, vastly increasing its utility and immediacy. But some context would be nice. For instance, the Toynbee stencil is listed as ‘pending’, though any aficinado of street art would look at it as one of the masters. Using the ‘meme’ trope (how’s that for PoMo self-referential hell?) maybe even undermines how many of the listed items work, or have worked, as a message, and imply perhaps a shorter life-cycle than they deserve or have (are Revs and Cost irrelevant because they are no longer actively tagging, even if they still have a large number of extant samples?). Internet meme tracing is fine, since the time cycles are short (which is an affect and basis for their success; a nonsense idea that holds one’s attention for a very brief moment), and the data mining tools can give some fairly objective metrics. But the ‘pending’ Toynbee, which is down to a handful of locations, is still seen by probably millions of people a year (a large number of which are finding it for the first time). And one doesn’t need to go back any further than Keith Haring (or less recently than De La Vega) to see that a wide range of intended (or incidental) messages exist. By flattening them under the rubric of ‘memes’, is a negative practice of co-optation (I can imagine Y&R junior account execs mining the site for new images to steal for Sprite ads; so much easier than actually walking to the LES or Williamsburg). Plus, the folks at the Wooster Collective already do a pretty good job of reporting and tracking with some sense of historical analysis.

But neither of them are likely to address ‘Phone Block Escort Service,’ an inexplicable piece of seeming graffiti that is pervasive on construction sheds. I couldn’t determine if it was an ad for a very odd outcall service, or anti-prostitution slogan. A more enterprising friend accosted a worker one day and determined the simple, though not obvious, truth: it is a marker for the location where phone service should enter the site (and is there to alert the phone company when they send their people to run lines). The explosion of new construction in the 90’s made it regular and prominent enough to create the sense that it intentional art. Or it may also be that I am simply stupid. Case in point: Back in the mid 90’s, the local band Lotion made blue stickers of their name using the same face as the old AT&T signs that marked a phone booth and placed them over the word ‘Phone.’ Since I only saw them in the East Village, for the longest time I thought it was a local Spanglish venacular for phone and was afraid to ask anyone, lest I look like some rube. At least I was right about that part (the worst thing is, I even knew Lotion was a band).