WebUrbanist » Guerilla Action & Art

Trash Can Art? 28 Garbage Cans That Belong In A Gallery

Marc — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:00:57 +0000

Dump that dirty old trash can into an even larger one, because it’s time to upgrade! Artists are not content to sit on their hands while the world turns into garbage. Their response? Turn the garbage cans into art.

(Images via thenewecologist, happytiler, egotvonline, foodbeast)

Garbage can modification covers a huge range; from dumpster vehicles to art gallery domes with ecological motives. The real lesson is that nothing in this world has to be boring, not even one of the most mundane objects in our everyday lives.

(Images via crookedbrains, kickapoofart, squash, seattlepi)

Give an artist the right supplies and they’ll turn the most boring trash receptacle into a creative experience. It’s easy to tell which garbage cans would win my trash.

(Images via marshalladams)

Smashcans are the wave of the future! They are normal disposal units that have been transformed into a dysfunctional new member of the family by the Baltimore, Maryland based artist Marshall Adams.

(Images via tumblrbot, 4nitsirk, offbeathome)

Home bins can be turned into something festive. Become the most popular home on your block for the garbage collectors by adding a touch of style.

(Images via nerdnirvana, urbanprankster, oddee, neatorama, randommization)

Trash cans are people too! Well, some of them are, at least. Be sure to feed them. The simple addition of giant eyes to a garbage can is enough to turn them into a fun bit of street art.

(Images via jalopyjournal, americantrails, presurfer, bcx)

A little paint and creativity can go a long way into turning the streets into a more vibrant and exciting place! Go out and make some change.

(Images via walyou, walyou, geyserofawesome, sharegoodstuffs, crookedbrains)

A little style in design could go a long way in making more interesting garbage cans. Be sure to support the movement by refusing to purchase a plastic molded can!

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24 Poke-worthy Facebook Timeline Covers

Marc — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:00:24 +0000

Facebook changes can often cause a landslide of creativity, as all the artsy types and tech-inclined push the limits. The new Facebook Timeline, with its new cover image, is the perfect playground for those who want to impress their friends.

(Images via mad4flash, technodesire, digitalwizdom, fbupdates)

Why not use the cover photo as a way to show off favorite personal images in a new and interesting way? Toss up some polaroids of the good old days, and they’ll be emphasized a whole lot more than they would be if they were tossed into a dusty album nested deeply inside your profile.

(Images via mameara, techomag, pixgateway, techomag)

It’s important to have fun when adjusting a profile. Eye-catching images and manipulated backgrounds can showcase new facets of one’s personality… and that’s the whole point of a profile, isn’t it?

(tweeting, pixgateway, reface)

The best Facebook Timeline cover photos step outside the box to display a quick scene or quirky setup for the rest of the page. Some careful planning and photo-editing software is all one needs to be the talk of the newsfeed.

(Images via mashable, v3im, dailylinked)

Use the integration of the cover image and your profile picture carefully. With the right tweaking, the cover image can replace the need for the profile photo, and become newsworthy in its own right.

(Images via hongkiat, mad4flash, techomag)

The huge area at the top of the Timeline is perfect to advertise one’s pet causes. This area can be the perfect space to share important ideas with friends and family.

(Images via redux, dailypics)

Art fans can put themselves directly into their favorite galleries, or slip their photo into some of the most famous masterpieces.

(Images via techomag, dailypics, openforum)

One of the easiest ways to customize a cover image is to add a profile picture like normal, and then overlay it over a humorous scene. Animal lovers will immediately see the benefits of this design.

(Images via dailypics, dailypics)

Nostalgic for old videogame favorites? Make everyone happy by adding an old school flair to the newest in social media tech.

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Feeling the Earth Move: Urban Sidewalk Liquid Intervention

Delana — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:00:11 +0000

The normal urban environment is hard, angular and not often playful. We go about our business with the type of calculated indifference cultivated through years of city dwelling. But when that cold, hard environment suddenly changes unexpectedly, we have no choice but to snap out of our collective reverie and take notice. That is precisely what happened when residents of Bourges, France came upon a highly unusual section of sidewalk.

(all images via: Raum)

This urban art installation was created by the Raum in the Box residence at the National Superior School of Art in Bourges. From a distance (and ignoring the small spigot at the top) this bump in the bricks looks almost like a speed bump. But when pedestrians stepped on it, it gave way and began to ripple and sway.

The “bricks” hid a soft water-filled cushion that provided an unusual way to interact with the city landscape. Children, adults and even pets were enchanted by the feeling of a fluid surface beneath their feet.

As an unexpected and non-threatening piece of urban art, La Ville Molle is an amusing and charming success. It flips our perceptions of the city on their heads and lets pedestrians interact with their town in a way that has never before been possible. But even more strikingly, it provides for a moment of play: something that is definitely lacking in most of our daily adult lives.

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Art, Not Ads: 13 Creative Billboard Takeovers

Steph — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:00:39 +0000

While billboard advertising can occasionally shock us with totally unexpected visuals, by and large, these massive champions of commercialism are not exactly pretty or interesting. Enter artists from around the world, who – with permission or not – come in and replace those ads, whether to subvert the original message or just to make passersby smile.

Double Happiness Billboard Swing

(images via: didierfaustino)

A billboard becomes a place for interactive play, made into a swing set with incredible views of New York City by artist Didier Faustino. Entitled ‘Double Happiness’, the project “responds to the society of materialism where individual desires seem to be prevailing over all. This nomad piece of urban furniture allows the reactivation of different public spaces and enables inhabitants to reappropriate fragments of their city.”

“They will both escape and dominate public space through a game of equilibrium and desequilibrium. By playing this “risky” game, and testing their own limits, two persons can experience together a new perception of space and recover an awareness of the physical world.”

Artists Take Over Whitewashed Billboards

(images via: animal NY)

Not only did Public Ad Campaign‘s New York Street Advertising Takeover whitewash 120 illegal advertisements located throughout the city, it also brought in over 50 artists to transform these new blank canvases into works of art. Instead of displaying an onslaught of commercialism, these spaces became interactive spaces for messages of peace and local pride. See more at Animal New York.

The Billboard Art Project: Taking Over LED Displays

(images via: billboard art project flickr)

Based in Richmond, Virginia, the Billboard Art Project has spread across the United States as artists take over those massively distracting digital billboards with LED displays. Though it’s not totally subverting the advertisements – they still run as usual – the art appears momentarily in between each ad, perhaps prompting onlookers to wonder exactly what it is that they’re looking at. Many of these works were captured by the organization’s Flickr group.

The Urban Land Project

(images via: the anthropologist)

Rather than an ad for yet another local bond company or huge international bank, locals in urban Los Angeles and Philadelphia got to view soothing images of the nature that can be found right within their own cities. Photographer Tim Simmons captured images of each city’s hidden natural wonders and displayed them on billboards for ‘The Urban Land Project.’

Art In Stead of Ads

(images via: how many billboards)

21 commissioned works by leading contemporary artists were presented onb billboards throughout Los Angeles in February and March 2010 for the project ‘How Many Billboards: Art in Stead’.

“The philosophical proposition of the exhibition is simple: art should occupy a visible position in the cacophony of mediated images in the city, and it should do so without merely adding to the visual noise. How Many Billboards? Art In Stead proposes that art periodically displace advertisement in the urban environment.

Billboards are a dominant feature of the landscape in Los Angeles. Thousands line the city’s thoroughfares, delivering high-end commercial messages to a repeat audience. Given outdoor advertising’s strong presence in public space, it seems reasonable and exciting to set up the possibility for art to be present in this field. The sudden existence of artistic speech mixed in with commercial speech provides a refreshing change of pace. Commercial messaging tells you to buy; artistic messaging encourages you to look and to think.”

Hand from Above by Chris O’Shea

(images via: chris o’shea)

Chris O’Shea imagines a world in which we humans are manipulated by an outside force, unseen except for a giant hand. In O’Shea’s interactive public art exhibit for BBC Big Screen in Liverpool, pedestrians watch a live feed on a billboard as the giant hand pokes and prods them in real time.

From Gajitz: “The installation is called Hand From Above, and it’s geek art at its finest. It was created, according to the artist, to encourage people to slow down in the midst of their daily routines. By throwing something completely unexpected into their day, O’Shea is injecting a little laughter into everyone’s lives. If the video above is any indication, most pedestrians love the project. Only a few walked by without even a smile, and most who saw themselves being harassed on-screen stopped to play along.”

Thoughtful Typography by Robert Montgomery

(images via: robert montgomery)

Artist Robert Montgomery replaces advertising with profound and poignant messages about love, human interaction and the world we live in. The artist “works in a poetic and melancholic post-situationist tradition.” His typographic works bear such disconcerting and thought-provoking messages as this: “The flood will lift the ghosts from the Hollywood Lawn Cemetery and they will disappear like ether in the new dead air. All the names will be erased from the billboards and the theaters and the piers and the magazines and the monuments. You live by myths of immortality, and your myths are not safe.”

Subliminal Billboards

(images via: unurth)

Billboards throughout Murcia, Spain bore strange fragments of type that didn’t make sense until seen as a whole, revealed by the artist Sam3. “”Murcia is infected with the plague of billboards everywhere, most of them neglected. 12 altered billboards to write a word that is hiding behind all this.”

U.S. Marines: The Change is Forever

(image via: arthur tubman)

It was all too easy to subvert a billboard by the U.S. Marines, which really did bear the ambiguous slogan ‘The Change is Forever’. An unidentified artist simply covered the young man’s face with that of a stylized skull, giving it a new meaning altogether.

Rebel Without a Lung by Jorge Rodriguez Geralda

(image via: fecal face)

Artist Jorge Rodriquez Geralda is known for painting his own images onto public surfaces like street signs, the sides of abandoned buildings and even entire construction sites. One notable early work is ‘Rebel Without a Lung’, a subversion of a Newport cigarette ad in New York City, completed in 1994.

McDonalds Billboard by the Billboard Liberation Front

(image vía: camarografo)

It wasn’t too hard to echo growing public sentiment about the quality of McDonald’s fast food. The Billboard Liberation Front just made two small changes to this McDonalds billboard in San Francisco so that the text reads ‘You have about 10,000 tastebuds. Kill them all.’ At the bottom right corner, the company’s slogan ‘I’m lovin’ it’ becomes ‘I’m sick of it.’

Banksy’s Los Angeles Billboards

(images via: design boom)

Graffiti artist Banksy notably altered a billboard in Los Angeles prior to the Academy Awards in February 2011, likely to call attention to the nomination of his documentary ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’. A rather lecherous Micky Mouse, cocktail in hand, was painted onto an existing billboard along with a drugged-out Minnie Mouse and a banner reading, ‘Living the Dream.’ It was quickly removed.

The East London Decapitator

(images via: the decaptitator)

More than a century after Jack the Ripper, London has a new killer on the prowl. This one may be taking the heads of billboard and advertising figures rather than living humans, but the works are still pretty gory. Not only are the heads painted out of the ads, but there’s lots of spattered blood left behind.

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Robert Brandenburg’s Found Art as Fine Art

Marc — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:00:03 +0000

Artist Robert Brandenburg brings dull paintings back to life. Taking old paintings with boring subjects, he adds a twist that brings them to an entirely new level. With Brandenburg’s creative touch, found art becomes fine art.

(Images via ianbrooks, sandboxworld)

Robert Brandenburg describes his art style as “Pop Surrealist Intervention Art”. For those outside of the walls of an art history class, it means he intervenes in otherwise boring paintings; turning them into parodies of pop culture that tug on our nostalgic feelings in interesting ways. Pooh could explain further, but Tigger’s had a bad day.

(Images via offbeatearth, g1988)

There are few cultural icons as innocent as Norman Rockwell and Woody from the Toy Story films. Such powerful perceived innocence only prompts Robert Brandenburg to further adjust the perspective of the viewer.

(Images via postershizzle, arrestedmotion)

Brandenburg enjoys slipping in pop culture figures from contemporary films into his paintings. In this piece, the terrifying man in a bunny suit from Donnie Darko carefully maintains a Pan Am aircraft, replacing the kindly looking mechanic in the original ad.

(Images via sotox3, superpunch, geyserofawesome, boingboing)

Under Brandenburg’s paintbrush, a placid waterfront becomes a scene straight out of a blockbuster film. A terrifying Kraken and a giant crab are monstrous visitors to the beachfront. Willy Wonka and his co-stars fish a floating body out of a (presumably) chocolate river, and a woman gazes out on a windy beach, not realizing she’s arrived on the Planet of the Apes.

(Images via brandenburgart, geyserofawesome, basecampcreative, superpunch)

Ghastly figures from film and nightmares enter these paintings. These interesting paintings feature Yoda gazing on a nude madonna, a giant arachnid attacking an otherwise normal town, and death visiting a bunch of skiing children. Last but not least, one sees the tripods from War of the Worlds marching across the landscape.