Get Involved - Billboards, Graffiti, and Beautification
Pro, con or indifferent to billboards and graffiti, those of you interested in the state of Los Angeles' public space have plenty of options to help you both beautify and think about the city we call home.
Want to help beautify? Art and civic organization Farmlab will be participating in the William Mead Community Beautification Project, Saturday, October 11, 2008 at 8am-1pm.
Those of you interested in other such programs can find them at the LA Board of Public Works Office of Community Beautification.
Do you have a theory like Too Tall Jahmal's about the relationship between things like graffiti and outdoor advertising that you'd like to share?
The Public School at Telic is an open-source public lecture project where the community is invited to submit ideas for classes. They'll be holding some lectures during October and early November inside the Richard Serra sculpture at LACMA, in collaboration with the folks at Machine Project. What better place to teach (or learn) about public and private spaces?
Of course, we would never, EVER encourage you leave a permanent mark on property you don't own or control. But those of you with uncontrollable urges in that respect would do well to visit the website of the Graffiti Research Lab.
Designers of high-tech (and non-permanent!) art projects like the L.A.S.E.R. Tagger depicted below, the folks at Graffiti Research Lab have taken what's essential about graffiti - projecting an individual voice - and severed it from the unfortunate property-destruction-arrested-night-in-lockup bits. Their hq is in NYC, but why should the East Coast have all the fun. If you adapt any of their techniques to local use, put a picture of it up in the SoCal Connected Flickr Pool.
Photo credit: The image associated at the top of this piece was taken by Flickr user Adan Garcia. It was used under Creative Commons license.