Alias Arts

We wanted to post an update to the subway animation video we posted yesterday. We’ve received a ton of terrific emails letting us (and you) know that the animation in the video was created by film and video artist Bill Brand. Bill’s currently a professor at Hampshire College. The recently restored piece was originally created 28 years ago in 1980. It’s called “Masstransiscope” and is indeed absolutely amazing.

Click here for a full breakdown of the project. Video is below.

File this under “made us smile on a rainy Friday morning”

Erik Burke, who recently did the fantastic “Writers Bench” tribute sent us a link to the video below. He writes:

“Following the DIY memorial to the Writers Bench, I found a simple and playful way to reenact subway graffiti. With a little help from my friends we went to a subway platform in Manhattan and Brooklyn to give life to the old saying “My Piece is Still Running.”

My Piece Is Still Running from Miss Tint on Vimeo.

From RageHaus:

“My wife and I recently we took a trip to NYC and stayed in Brooklyn near Union and 4th. Long story short, we became quite good at navigating the subways (seeings how this was our first NYC trip). We took the Q train from Atlantic-Pacific headed toward Manhattan and found a gem. We were so excited to see this animation, we rode the route a second time just to get some video. We couldn’t believe that someone took the time to paint each frame and space it so well. We saw some fantastic things (and some strangely odd things) while riding the subway, but this was work worthy of sharing.”

(Thanks, Liz)

More from Gaia here.

(Photo by Rebecca Fuller)

From Filthy Luker: “The M32 motorway aggressively divides two communities in Bristol with a torrent of danger, noise and pollution that must be confronted daily by many. Hanging out my dirty linen in public i am making the statement that WE LIVE HERE and don’t forget it The washing stayed out for a few hours, til it dried. it will come out again next time i get filthy”

From our friend Nis in Copenhagen:

“I was on my way home from work today, and when I changed subway lines at Nørreport Station (the busiest travel hub in Copenhagen) – something seemed off. There were no ads at all! Somehow someone have taken down all the ads inside locked poster-frames on a heavily CCTV’ed train station. And I think it’s been done during the day – because I didn’t notice the ads missing this morning on my way to work.

At first I thought “I must be in the process of switching the posters right now”, but then I noticed…

…that the logo on top of the poster frames had been altered. It no longer said CLEAR CHANNEL, but now read LIAR CHANNEL.”

This prank was so fantastic in it’s simplicity that I had to share it with you.”

Nis

A couple of weeks ago on our Facebook fan page, we asked the following question, just to see how people would respond:

“If I gave you $50 today, with the condition that you had to spend it on “art”, what would you do with it?”

The question was very popular. We immediately received a ton of wonderful answers. 85 in all.

Later that night, talking with Sara, we thought it would be fun to actually fund a few of the responses that were posted. It wasn’t something that we had thought about when we asked the question. We were just curious what people would say.

One response that we liked a lot came from Ché Francisco Ortiz. He wrote:

“Buy a ton of sidewalk chalk and give it out to every kid i saw at the park or boardwalk.”

So that night we sent Che $50 to buy his chalk via Paypal.

This past weekend Che bought the chalk and headed to the boardwalk.

Yesterday we received a link to Che’s Flickr site which includes tons of photos of kids and their parents drawing and having an amazing time.

We were absolutely thrilled.