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Category Archives: buildings
Improv Everywhere Ghostbusters Prank in the New York Public Library
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edited by Matt Adams / song by Tyler Walker
Read the full write up with tons of photos at Improv Everywhere.
Revitalization Through Street Art
Bay Area artist Jeremy Novy has a cool project where he places stencils of payphones in now vacant phone booths. Might as well put something there!
In a similar series, he renovates boarded up buildings by adding pretty windows. Check out his renovation of the State Street Theatre in Milwaukee.
Great Dome Rick Roll
Those crazy MIT hackers have struck again with a new hack on the Great Dome. This time the pranksters attached the first seven notes of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” essentially Rick Rolling all of Cambridge.
Of course there is a rich history of “hacking” at MIT and you can read about all the old classics at hacks.mit.edu. The Great Dome is a popular target– the R2D2 and police car hacks are among my favorites from the past.
There’s a great book documenting all of the best MIT hacks (which by the way is the campus term for pranks).
No Longer Empty
Thanks to the real estate bubble bursting and the ensuing recession, there are tons of vacant retail spaces all around Manhattan. What to do with all this prime space? One solution is to cover it with illegal advertising.
No Longer Empty has a much more elegant solution. The group is working with landlords to turn vacant storefronts into temporary art galleries that are free and open to the public. They currently have a gallery in the ground level of the new Caledonia luxury hotel on 16th Street and 10th Avenue by the High Line. I checked it out last week and it was awesome. What a novel idea! Using empty space for the public good!
Interactive LED Wall
Here’s a really cool installation done by Moment Factory in Montreal. The wall includes tracking devices and low-resolution LED displays and is capable of showing many different visualizations based on the presence and movement of people. The 35,000 LED bulb installation is now installed permanently at La Vitrine Culturelle and can be seen every evening from 7 to 11 (145, rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest, Montréal)
Stream of Books
Smoking Building
Jim Darling made a couple of modifications to a factory building in Beacon, NY. He explains:
Walking up close to one of my favorite buildings in town, I noticed the collapsed tunnel that goes under the old factory. The door and window coverings made for a nice pair of eyes. To paint the right eye I balanced on some rusty pipes that stick out from the ground. Once the eyes were finished, the building asked me for a smoke and so I gave him one.
3D Mural Walls
Using Legos to Repair Building Cracks
German artist Jan Vormann has been filling up cracks created in German buildings during World War II with Legos.