Interactive Street Art

This interactive small replica of the “Hamburg "Elbphilharmonie”, a 800-Million Dollar Opera house that has been overdue for some years, playfully explores the sense and non-sense of spending millions of public funding on a very reduced space to consume classical music. The interactive art group ReClaim Collective engages with public and private urban landscaping.

Corporate professionals are increasingly entering the urban-art scene. US-based Ad-Agency Leo Burnett commissioned ten artists from Chicago to turn 50-year old fridges into sources of urban functionality from renewable energy. After having wasted energy for more than five decades, these old boxes reappear in urban Chicago to give something back: MetamorFridges. 

I am sure we could fight a never-ending war of definitions where interaction starts in the universe of street art. One artist on the borderline of the interactive world is New York based artist Aakash Nihalani. Besides a lot of other great stuff that he does (be sure to check out his website), he plays with his urban environment to create simple arithmetic. His work opens the eyes for discovering your own urban math. It would be interesting to know how his work influences the life-time of how movable things like trashcans are arranged ones they become part of an equation. 

(source: Vlady Art)

(Source: HAHAMAG)

Fotos from: http://www.matzou.com/blog/ & https://www.facebook.com/InsightTravels

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts_4vOUDImE

fra.biancoshock has been an extremely productive Italian street-artist during the last three years, who mostly works in and around Milan, a comercial hub in Northern Italy. Most of his work can be described as urban interventions and metaphorical transformations of urban objects. But he also actively engages the observer in his works as pictured in the "High five station" and "Antistress For Free" installations above. Be sure to check out his website. (All pictures are (c) by Myst-R)

The first feature from India: Ahmedabad Objectified is a an experimental interactive art group based in Ahmedabad. In their first experiment, they allow individuals to put on stenciled head-phones. People wearing their head-phones create an interesting contrast to many places where you hardly find anyone without real head-phones on in public. The contrast emphasizes the arguable insulation that head-phones create between individual and environment. 

Oakoak is a very popular and talented french street artist. His blog reveals much more creative street art, though most can be regarded as classic interactions with urban environments. But some of his work provides beautiful opportunities for human interaction like the outdoor mine-sweeper game pictured above and they should definetly be featured here. Check out his blog.

Amsterdam based skate-boarding and street art lover(s) "2n4sv" (https://twitter.com/2n4sv) let you kick flip wihout a board. Be sure to check out the photos on their tumblr. I think these types of interventions are great. They reward the playful and the open-eyed with toys that expand upon the two-dimensional black-and-white stencil they appear to be.

Original posting and picture source: Christopher Jobson, thisiscolossal.com

Florian Rivière is a french street artist who strongly focuses playful interaction. Like in the pictures above, he creatively turns urban environments into fun fairs, sports fields and playgrounds. 

Contra may refer to a fresh style of political dialoque. Rather than blaming politicans for their performance externally, the interacting individual is asked to come up with cognitive or motivational processes, manifesting in the politicians thoughts.

Architect John Locke of the New York urban intervention group "Department of Urban Betterment" (http://dubnewyork.org/) found a reason to live for an endangered species: He turned telephone booths into miniature libraries. After all, books connect people, too. 

"Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space. Everyone is invited to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data. Each dead drop is installed empty except a readme.txt file explaining the project."

Street sign manipulation is a classic feature of urban streetart, but incorporates only limited elements of observer interaction. However, a strong (and out-of-place) association emerges when drivers see these signs. I tried it at home and it is pure beauty to watch them when they start singing. While lacking grand elaboration, I still think David Muzal's youtube video qualifies for a listing and may inspire others to associative urban manipulations.