The Ads Are In the Air

In case you were wondering, the answer is no; nothing is sacred anymore. At least not to advertisers. A Dutch company called Geotronics recently launched a re-branding campaign by staging a full-blown musical number in the busy concourse of a train station in Utrecht. While there are plenty of ways to read this (the least entertaining of which is not that we'll finally have an answer for people who say musicals are unrealistic because "no one bursts into song and dance routines in real life"), it seems to set a troubling precedent. Long since unsatisfied by innumerable billboards and neon signs, advertisers have been aggressively acquiring pieces of the cityscape (ceilings, stairs, escalators, trees, sidewalks, benches, busses, etc.) over the past few decades. With this latest move, it seems, even the physical space -- the very air around us -- is fair game for splashy advertisements.



Observe above: an image of Charing Cross Station in London. Below, the same image with green filters highlighting existing advertisements:



Here, as in most contemporary public and quasi-public spaces, people are bombarded with ads for food, real estate, toiletries, and events. The advertising has become so ubiquitous, that it seems abnormal to pass through an urban space without ads on every flat surface (think back to the media bonanza in late 2006 when São Paulo banned all outdoor ads). And now, we can't even count on the people we're sitting next to, or the janitor sweeping up litter a few yards away, not to be a part of some grandiose sales pitch just waiting to erupt. The advertisement space in public spaces starts to look a bit more like this:



There's a fundamental problem with being told by your environment that you are merely a consumer. Yes, we are consumers living in a capitalist society, and I don't intend to argue the merit or value of that. But there is something to be said for maintaining the dignity of public space, and keeping some places free of advertisements. If we merely see each other as fellow consumers we are, in an odd way, pitted against each other. I have to buy what you can't buy if I want to feel successful. Ads do nothing to reinforce the fundamental building blocks of any harmonious human settlement: community, interdependence, and civic engagement. Those are the values that public spaces should strive to promote.

But what's the big deal with the Geotronics musical performance ad, you may be asking? If we are already bombarded by ads everywhere we go, what's the difference adding the occasional flash-mob-esque song and dance routine hawking toothpaste or the newest Barbie doll? It might even be fun -- certainly moreso than any billboard. But advertising has a way of growing, cancer-like, taking over new nooks and crannies without us noticing. In some cities, storefronts are now more profitable with windows boarded up to shoulder more posters and billboards.

Jump ahead a decade or two, to when these performance ads have become more commonplace. What happens when civic officials see more value in a park as a place for elaborate performance ads? Just imagine your city's parks, transit stations, and civic plazas as dozens or even hundreds of little Disneylands. And what would a child who grows up riding the Citibank Train to Coca Cola Park instead of just 'the local playground' think of the city once they were grown? The only value a place has once it's been bought is what the company that bought it was willing to pay for it.

(Original photo from Flickr user annabelb. The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Chicago El Stories

So here's an interesting art project: Chicago El Stories is an installation at the Armitage Brown Line stop in Lincoln Park that pairs photos of seemingly unimportant sites around the city with audio files of peoples' memories and stories about the places. It's an interesting way of showing how the urban environment is littered with personal experiences, and how the city can be so many different things to so many people.

Mapping the Self @ the Museum of Contemporary Art

At first glance Mapping the Self, the MCA's contribution to the Festival of Maps lineup, takes some serious liberties in how it defines what a map is. But then, as the introduction to the exhibit plainly states, this exhibit is not about maps. It's about how artists use maps, both to define themselves and the physical, social, and emotional spaces that they inhabit and/or experience. In fact the very meaning of the word "map" is derived from the Latin word mappa, for the cloth that maps were drawn on. A map is an exploration drawn out on a physical surface. With the etymology in mind, the pieces at the MCA's exhibit fit the theme a bit more logically.

Save for a few larger pieces spread throughout the fourth-floor atrium (including a clever recreation of John Baldassari's Framed Heights), the bulk of the work in the exhibit is organized into two rooms; the first deals with artists' use of mapping to define and examine themselves, and the second with the way that they use maps to explore and reimagine the world around them.

A piece by artist Patrick McGee is a notable highlight in the first section as it explodes the traditional concept of the map at the same time that it asserts itself as one. McGee took measurements of his head to come up with a new system of units of measurement; the diameter of his head (the Fit) became the measurement of length, its volume (the immersion) the measurement of capacity, and weight (the burden) the measurement of mass. McGee's piece is both entertaining and thought-provoking, especially in the context of this exhibit. It represents, after all, the physical nature of the artist's head, but it also breaks the head down into very basic calculations and reevaluates the rest of the physical world in relation to the artist. It is a philosophical mapping of the idea of physicality; a delightful mindf*ck, if you will.

The second room contains pieces that look more like...well, maps, or at least more like what you might expect maps to look like. There are exceptions to this rule, but even a glance around this gallery will reassure anyone thrown off by the first section. Chicago plays a major role here as the physical place being examined and/or reimagined in many of the pieces on display, adding to the sense of familiarity. Works by Stephanie Nadeau and John Cage are highlights, but again, one piece sort of steals this half of the show. That piece, Paula Henderson's Extended Remix, takes Chicago's 77 community areas, color codes them by their majority racial demographic, and then puts them into alphabetical order. The boundaries stay the same, but the names and colors shuffle around, creating a vivid and rather jarring reinterpretation of this notoriously segregated city's racial landscape. It is a very different Chicago seen in this map; paired with Nareau's photographic piece Redlined, it makes a potent statement about the history of racial politics in the Windy City.

Overall, complaints about this exhibit are of the petty variety. Single plaques often hold the descriptions for multiple pieces, which can be confusing. Some of the work on display seemed to lack label or explanation altogether. The thematic nature of the two rooms gives the exhibit structure, though it can be a bit loose at times; as a result, some pieces feel a bit superfluous. But as a whole, the exhibit does what it sets out to do by providing a solid exploration of the way contemporary artists are using maps in very different (and very challenging) ways to explore what it means to be human, and what it means to be part of our society.

While Mapping the Self takes up a relatively small amount of floor space, don't expect to make it through this one on your lunch break. While that would be do-able in theory, in reality you can't really get much from this exhibit unless you plan on taking your time. With most of the art on display, you'll find your efforts well-rewarded.

IF YOU GO
Mapping the Self is on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art until March 2nd, 2008. The museum is open 10:00am-8:00pm on Thursdays, and 10:00am-5:00pm Wednesdays-Sundays; it is closed on Mondays. The entry fee for the MCA is $10 for adults, $6 for students and seniors (both suggested). Tuesdays are free admission.


Links:
Mapping the Self (Museum of Contemporary Art

Guerilla Geography

"We all have a different view of the world. Each of us have our own and diverse ways of using our unique senses to interpret the risks, emotions, possibilities, futures and experiences that places have to offer. How we see where we are is dependent on the experiences that we have had, how we have experimented and explored our environment - and so if the guerilla geographer (psycho-geographer) shapes an experience for a person, that person might forever change their view of themselves, their influences and their world."



Links:
Guerilla Geography Blog (found via Very Spatial)

Not Just Thinking Inside The Box -- Living In It

Places are usually defined by buildings, streets, borders, landscapes. And while Paris, the Great Wall of China, and the Grand Canyon are all huge areas, people's experiences of them are very small-scale. We move through large places slowly and come to understand them piece by piece. The amount of space that we take up as individual human beings is infinitesimally small; it is something that cannot be changed by status, ethnic, economic, or other. Even though we vary slightly in size, we take up relatively the same tiny, tiny amount of space.

However, we can change how much space we claim as our private domain and limit who can experience it, and when. Personally, I tend to think that people these days want to own far more space than is necessary thanks to the the kind of quantity-over-quality thinking that seems to be driving our society to the brink of implosion. Soapboxing aside, students at the Technical University of Munich have taken things to the other extreme, managing to pack all of the luxuries of a modern condominium into a 76 square foot cube. No joke.

I would LOVE the chance to live in one of these $96,000 miracles for a week. Probably couldn't do it for much longer, but it's amazing how slick this thing looks on paper...a remarkable amount of storage space, two double beds, toilet, shower, stove, fridge, LED lighting, and a flat-screen TV would make for comfy living. It would also be a great way to reevaluate how one uses the space allotted to them. To have a house that is only marginally larger than the space that one naturally inhabits sounds like an eye-opening experience. For the time being, most of us will have to live vicariously (there's that word again.) So make sure to check out the slide show.


Links:
Condominimum (Wired)