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Invasion of the Space Invader Mosaics?

Posted by Cliff on from the visual-memes-from-our-popular-culture dept.

Lambadomy asks: "The space invaders seem to be actually invading, but this time in the form of small tile mosaics. At first I thought these were just in Los Angeles, where I have found three so far, in westwood and in culver city. But on a recent trip to europe, I found them in Amsterdam, Bern and Paris. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to their locations and size. Most seem to be about a foot square, but in Paris there was one made of 3 inch black tiles on the side of a bridge. Their existance is driving me crazy, so I thought I'd ask some of the oddest people I know of if they have any insight as to who is doing this and why." From the CRT, into our collective subconscious, and now returned as another form of urban tagging. Are these pixelated extra terrestrials making another bid for dominance (if so, we want pictures!), or is this the latest urban legend?

7 comments

  1. A picture would be nice.... by scotpurl · · Score: 1

    ...so that we get an idea of what you're actually talking about.

  2. Geez I love google.... by fwc · · Score: 5
    After some searching I found http://www.space-invaders.com/ which explains this. It even includes pictures and a map where these can be found!

    This is kinda cool :)

    --

    1. Re:Geez I love google.... by lmjohns3 · · Score: 2

      I spent last year studying abroad in Grenoble, France, and became interested in these little guys when i noticed them starting to crop up around the city there. Apparently there's only one tile one in Grenoble, but there are many more that are spraypainted. I started noticing them in other cities, too, and for a while I really thought they were some sort of city beautification project. The tile ones, especially, are very well done.

      Inferring from space-invaders.com, this phenomenon is pushed mostly by a couple of French kids. I think they either live in Montpellier (in the south of France) or in Paris, because that's where I saw the most tile invaders, and those two cities are the most elaborate part of their web site.

      The invaders actually got me interested in graffiti-as-art in general. If you've never checked out some of the really neat graffiti, go over to graffiti.org to check out some of the better stuff. I also have some photos of Grenoble's large graffiti wall up at ambient.2y.net. Granted, a lot of graffiti is just people showing off or advertising their gang or whatever, but some of it is truly amazing.

  3. This is the weirdest shit... by jonr · · Score: 1

    Looks like it orginates from France, if you count the cities. Maybe I should go to my local building store for some tiles and join the newest fad...

  4. Just a PR spin? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3
    Why does this smell like some badly-designed PR rollout for some new game? Look at the facts:
    • We have a story that makes no sense, except that these things seem to be everywhere he's been, and that should be a clue
    • We have another theoretically unrelated poster also now pointing at a pointless web site that smells of an ad campaign.
    • And then we have me, a theoretically anonymous poster, who is pointing out that it might just be something to get a buzz going, so that the new game when it rolls out will already be the talk of the /. community!
    No conspiracy here. Move along. Move along.
    1. Re:Just a PR spin? by stilwebm · · Score: 1

      Often art makes little sense to the observer. This is, afterall, the brainchild of an artist.

  5. Re:Ask Slashdot, and get more of those! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    We should make a HOWTO for these mosaics...