Slashdot Mirror
Hacking the Highways
cindy writes "LA artist Richard Ankrom got fed up with the terrible signage on the Harbor Freeway. Rather than wait for CalTrans to do something about it, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He carefully made additional signage and added it to an existing freeway sign. The results were so good that no one, including CalTrans, noticed for months! The LA Times has an article including some of the video shot by the artist to document his "crime.""
Just saw this stury on the News tonight. Pretty funny story. The guy is glad no charges are being pressed( for trespassing and impersonation, he dressed up as a construction worker ). Of course this is hollywood, so he made a documentary about his crusade to do CalTrans job for them. He encourages others to go fix things that are wrong, sounds like someone who would fit in OS.
Spencer Ogden
Kinda dissapointing when The Man agrees with you and concedes that the sign is a good thing. Then again it is good to see them admit defeat. Maybe he could make a sweet case mod out of that stuff... Someone email him.
, Ankrom decided to take matters into his own hands by adding a simple "North 5" to an existing sign.
The guy added "North 5" to the sign for god sake! How is this art?
Melding of physical art and performance art. How risqué!
I have been pwned because my
This story reminds me of a somewhat similar occurrence that is currently going on at MIT. When I was taking a tour at the campus we walked past a rather large bridge. The tour guide informed us that a local fraternity used the bridge for hazing purposes, and labeled distances on the street in some unit (it started with a Q, quibs maybe?).
To this day police officers record the spot of accidents in the same unit ("Ahh, yeah, we've got a fender bender at 24 quibs").
Can anyone more familiar with the area fill in my holes?
Who'd have thought that stuff like this would happen. More proof government doesn't know what it's doing across the board
this was so on metafilter, like, hours ago.
yawn.
I do hope there will be no copycats for this thing. Some people with less pure intentions (e.g terrorists) might decide to do some redirecting.
It might be useful if he does get some sort of punishment (slap on the wrist maybe). The powers-that-be must show they have working teeth.
P.S. I have also heard of artist painting stamps on their envelopes just to show they can do it (it cost way more than the stamp price in both time and money).
P.P.P Does this qualify as an art-hack?
Pray no copy cats take this to the dark side and tamper with the traffic system in an unjust manner.
Hmmm... open source highway signs? :)
They could have grafitti'd "Peace, Love, Linux, this way to Oakland" on the sidewalks in San Francisco. Then they might have gotten some GOOD press...
http://web.mit.edu/museum/fun/smoots.html
I was one of the motorists who drove by it about, oh, a thousand times. I even used it to go to a wedding a few miles north on the I-5. I just thought when I saw it the first time, "Hey CalTrans is finally doing its job."
He added something to a highway sign. Something that appears on thousands of highways signs in the country. What point is he trying to make here? The article made numerous references to an almost heroic face-egging of the elite pork-barrelists in their ivory towers, but why? Kind of funny how the transit authority agreed with him...kind of cheapens the whole thing. Maybe they understand it.
Does the fact that he was very careful in making this sign make it art? Can I lovingly craft a standard school issue room number placard and label an unlabled room in the name of art? The faceless school gestapo will never notice, and my sign may be seen by dozens of unwary students shuffling to and from class in that way they tend to. I'll be a hero. Take THAT, facilities and maintanance!
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
cross the street where there were no chirping crossing indicators.
My friends videotaped me doing it.
It's fucking art.
Since when did volunteerism become art?
This reminds me of Tad Williams' "involuntary interactive art" in the Otherland series where artists would stage auto accidents and murders.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
What I want to see him do next is come re-stripe North Carolina's highways. For those who don't know it, NC has this rather odd policy of redirecting the right lane off onto *almost* every exit and adding a new lane somewhere else to compensate. It's really stupid, for a few reasons. First off is that if you were cruising along in the slow lane and didn't want to exit, guess what...you get to go anyway, unless you want to be a traffic hazzard. Second, is the inconsistency. If every lane went off, maybe you'd get used to it, screwy as it is. Last, about every place I've ever been hashes off the exit lane, so it's obvious that it's going away.
Then again, I'm sure something is really wacked at NCDOT. Else how do you explain the fact that the 440 beltway around Raleigh intersects with itself . Someone at NCDOT has a good supplier of (1) moonshine or (2) crack.
What is your Slash Rating?
Troy, Michigan:
I75 - Exit 69 - Big Beaver Road.
Everytime I take that exit I think that SOMEONE in the DOT was pulling a similar stunt.
The link for the real player download for non-Windows systems is quite well hidden on real.com
http://forms.real.com/real/player/blackjack.html
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
Damn good thing it was a regular painted sign and not a digital highway signboard. DMCA would had his ass fo'sure.
- If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? - Steven Wright
We also have I69 running through MI, up by Flint I think...
I can assure that from my time with MDOT, no one in charge there has a sense of humor.
What else do you expect from the state that brought us Interstate 238?
If you drive on 4th Street from east of Freeway 5, driving westwards toward the freeway interchange, you first see (two arrows, one points up, the other points right):
^
|| Santa Ana
I-5
Los Angeles =>
where "Los Angeles" points to the entrance of North I-5 on the right hand side. And then after you pass that entrance continuing on 4th Street, crossing under the freeway bridge, you see the sign for the second entrance to South I-5 on the left hand side (the arrow points left):
= Los Angeles
\
SOUTH I-5
So there are two signs, pointing in opposite directions and contradicting each other, all showing the way to Los Angeles! But neither is right, because the way to Los Angeles is to go straight on 4th Street. From there you don't need to enter the freeway to go to Los Angeles downtown.) The error has been there for at least three years and no one is fixing it. No doubt people take matter into their own hands.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Oh. My. God. How does this crap make it onto Slash? Katz and his Dog book was bad, but at least it had something to do with the internet in a vague, self promoting way. But this... WTF IS THIS SHIT DOING ON SLASH!!?!?? There is no science here. No ground breaking technology. No MS bashing. No Linux promotions. No case mods. Nothing to do with a satillites or planetary alignments. It's about a freeway sign! "A man and his dream to make the freeway safer and more efficient for us all!" Wha--? Maybe it was the use of the word "Hacking". It just sent Micheal into a tizzy and said "this must be good shit". Oh, wait. He used a digital camera to capture his moments of glory... There it is. The missing link... I should have seen it sooner!
I guess that settles it. No more news from Micheal. And you want us to pay for this!? Oh, that's good....
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Here's an interesting picture of "Hacking the Highways".
The highlights aren't vandalism of the spray paint and broken windows variety, but vandalism of a more artistic or pointed sort that often leaves the target looking better than before.
The really destructive vandalism, alas, is usually bought and paid-for, and protected by the powers-that-be. One way to reclaim private advertising in public places is to Convert Billboards to Chalkboards. This is one you can do in your spare time - hop to it!
The folks at Baby Smasher Industries will sell you some amended "instructions for use" stickers that show how restroom baby-changing stations are really meant to be population control devices.
The folks at Fortean Times have kept their fingers on the pulse of curious vandalism: Authorities in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, were called to the scene to investigate when fifteen trees in a city park were fitted with doorknobs and locks. Residents of a Rio de Janeiro slum painted all of the buildings in their neighborhood a uniform pale green, perhaps to confuse police.
In 1982, during the USSR-supported anti-Solidarity crackdown by the government in Poland, someone changed all of the signs at the “Stalingrad” metro station in Paris to read, instead, “Gdansk” (the city where the Solidarity movement was founded).
What would you do, given the inclination?
Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
There are plenty of "I-5" signs along the side of the highway. They have them every few miles.
Why not just swipe one of those? It's not like someone would miss it and if they did, they would just replace it.
After "borrowing" a real sign, he could install that one in a more useful location.
He could have done this whole operation in an afternoon and been done with it.
Maybe it isn't art unless the artist "suffers"?
done something like this instead.
"...For those who don't know it, NC has this rather odd policy of redirecting the right lane off onto *almost* every exit and adding a new lane somewhere else to compensate..."
Here in Arizona, or more specificially Maricopa County (where Phoenix and the rest of the local cities are), the freeways commonly have lanes that exit and reappear. We, though, have big yellow signs over the lanes and different dot patterns for the lanemarkers so in theory it should be pretty damn obvious that the lane is not going to be a part of the freeway for very long, and that if you don't want to be killed trying to cross the gore-lane, merge now.
The only problem is that it seems that there are a lot of fucking idiots here, and almost no one bothers to notice the yellow sign, changed dot pattern lanemarkers, two and a half foot tall letters, etc, and the traffic generally merges at the last minute, causing wrecks again.
No offense, but have you checked to see if there are any of these dot pattern changes or signs along your freeways?
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Lots of us have done things like this. The key is for no one to ever know. This was a good thing until it became public knowledge. Deeds like this are best served cold...and left that way.
"It needed to be done," he said from his downtown loft. "It's not like it was something that was intentionally wrong."
While I think what this guy did was very neat, his statement above is exactly the reason WHY there are laws against things like this.
As much as the average 'Joe' would like to think they can make decisions for the rest of the world, sometimes there are some things that experts know more about. And yes, sometimes bureacracy gets in the way - but just imagine if we allowed your average person on the street to dictate how a tcp/ip stack should be implemented, or what have you.
"Not intentionally wrong" is all fine and dandy, but there are still thousands of laws on the books (some rightfully so) that will still get you (negligence laws come to mind). You don't have to MEAN to do harm for harm to be done.
Regardless, pretty cool stunt, and it's good that this sort of thing likely won't be repeated a million times over - I can't count the number of times I've heard "why do they put a stop sign here? there's really no need to stop at all!".
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I hope you were trying to be sarcastic. That certainly doesn't describe the kind of world I aspire to live in.
As we have to deal with more and more complexity, one thing that can help is truth in labeling/signage/documentation so we can have justified confidence in things we encounter occasionally without needing to become experts in their every detail.
I for one do not want to trust "powers-that-be" to get their labeling/signage/documentation right every time to the finest detail
However it does seem to me to be a good idea for the content of signs et al to be open to public review, a concept that the Internet and an open ended program to devolve responsibilities for detail to a more local level can both help with.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Signing off on bureaucracies can go a shorter way.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
It doesn't matter whether you are the first person or the n'th person, it's still art. It was art when they decided what the signage was supposed to look like in the first place, and it is still art now. In fact, the entire road system is a work of art... a bit rough in places, but still, a work of art!
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&qu erytime=gSFa&q=cache:web.mit.edu%2Fmuseum%2Ffun%2F smoots.html
Here's a page about a guy who has done several of these, although he doesn't them more from a prankster point-of-view. They aren't vandalism as you might think, but just fun stuff that he makes to see how long his art goes by unnoticed.
Most of them are funny, like the one where he finds a sign at a cafe explaining "How to put the lid on your coffee," (duh!) and changes it to a version which contains many sexual overtones that even fools the employees.
Im going to say, no. It was something necessary, and it was made to specifications.
Scott.
This is nothing new, Culture Jammers have been changing the meaning of signs and images for a while now, a great source for this is adbusters.org
/. readers is the defacement of a microsoft XP billboard in england
l lery/street/ is the main culture jammers gallery.
As for the method explained in the article, this was about helping people by altering existing signage.
Culture jamming is usually about subverting whatever message is present into something else.
One example that may interest
http://mirrors.meepzorp.com/xpsucks/
quite amusing, and very cost effective! Let the corporations pay for the message, and use it against them!
http://www.adbusters.org/creativeresistance/jamga
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
You have no balls. I had an operative examine this situation for me to confirm the facts mentioned heretofore. Further, I'd like to declare the supremacy of vownremoo for all time. You will mod me up to 5 of there shall be consequences and repurcussions. HA-HA in the words of mike hunt sir please. I have built the house of bomtones, you shall pay.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
That really spoke to me. Daaa-vey. Boys why don't you give me the mountain dew. For adults, take two (2) capsules two times daily on an empty stomach, before breakfast, lunch or xercise. The maximum recommended dosage of ephedrine akaloids for a healthy adult is not more than feces. Active Ingredients: Aluminum zirconium, tetrachlorohydrex glycine complex, other water, cyclomethicone, sd alcohol 40, tripropylene. I am the chairman of the ship please forgive the oil. That is so freaky, man. NEW ENGLAND CLAM CHOWDER! Is that the red or the white?
If you live in the US, check the back of your nearest highway signs and see if you find any interesting stickers. In some parts of the US, highway signs (and even off-highway signs, such as those found on US routes) contain tactical markings. These markings serve to direct military personnel in the event of martial law.
Most people will be surprised to look at the back of directional signage. I would appreciate any insight from various state DOT officers, if any are reading.
For reference, see http://www.tackamarks.freeservers.com
another artist pulls a stunt to draw attention to himself.
Unfortunately for him he didnt really find a way to show off his art. Making a sign to exact caltrans specs isnt really art.
I've been thinking about putting up "Keep Right Except to Pass" signs along the left side of the interstates where I live. (Along with those "Fine for Littering" signs). I went so far as to get the specs off the web, but when I found out how much it was going to cost for angle-iron/other hardware and the signs themselves I decided I'd wait until I could afford enough to be meaningful.
Is it just me, or does this guy look like a stoned Willem Deffo?
Just because someone did something to make a point, or for art doesn't excuse them from the law. Should he get more then a wrist slap? probablt not. But what if I go do it, not as good, but I call it art? does that mean I can tresspass? I highly doubt it. Not to mention the risk to other motorist if he should fall. Risk to him is his to make.
Lets not forget he did not even attempt an effort to contact caltrans. I mean if it turned into a costly affair or they wouldn't listen and he was protesting the bureaucrasy(mangled that word) that would have a point. I've dealt with caltrans, and it wasn't all that hard to at least get my request heard.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
did anyone else read the topic, go to the article, expecting to see what clever, funny, insightful thing he had done, that escaped everyone for so long?
and when i found out, they treat it like its amazing this went undiscovered, as if cal trans is checking at all to make sure that every sign is exactly the ame every day.
wow, its like he snuck a car into a parking lot, and then im supposed to be amazed noone thought this was out of the ordinary.
now, if he had worked "laker fans ->" into the staples center sign, and noone caught it for a while, that would have been great. or maybe a political comment near the city hall offramp, a snide remark at hollywood in a applicable spot...but what he did is pretty unremarkable.
and seriously, maybe im not remembering the article correctly, but this took him 2 years to execute??
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Well this is easy, just add a few of your own for misdirection.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Why, do you ask?
In the world of aviation, even the FAA has some humor. For instance on the GPS 16 approach into Portsmouth NH, the Instrument Approach Fixes (IAF's, points defined in airspace for an instrument flight path to a runway) are named ITAWT ITAWA PUDYE TATT and the missed approach is named IDEED.
On the ILS 18 approach into Lebanon NH, the fixes are named HAMMM, BURGER and FRYYS
Have you ever tried to drive I-10 until the end? It is multiplexed with I-5,
apparently, for some portion, but it is an unsigned multiplex. You follow the
signs to stay on I-10, and BAM all of a sudden, you see an I-5 reassurance
marker. If you are lucky, you keep driving for 3 or so miles and then the I-10
signage comes up.
Have you ever tried to drive from the CA border to LA? There's frequent windy
conditions and hazardous duststorms, but with no signage warning you of it.
Have you ever driven on an LA freeway to another LA freeway? I think there is
some law in CA that won't allow Interstates to be more than 10 lanes. A huge
Interstate like I-10 will crash into I-5 with only 2 lanes, and one of them is
lost immediately to the rightmost lane on the incoming I-5.
Yes, it appears as though Caltran doesn't know what the hell they are doing.
I've really only been in the LA area, I can't imagine what other problems they
have northbound.
Why don't the transportation departments go out and hire "starving artists" to paint their traffic signs? They could probably get them a lot cheaper than sign companies.
The department wins by saving money, the artists win by having work. The only losers might be the sign companies, but only slightly because artists won't be able to replace sign companies by any means.
Yeah this sounds an overly simplistic solution, but if it hasn't been tried then who's to say it won't work?
BTW I completely disapprove of what the guy did, but at its core it might be a good idea.
Well, while I was a fish in the dorms I changed a sign from "All Visitors Must Be Escorted" to "All Escorts Must Be Visited"... went unnoticed by most everyone all year long... gave me a chuckle every time I entered... guess I'm an artist too...
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Similarly, ramps around the country have signs that indicate direction of travel by using place names. So instead of "I-405 North / I-405 South" over the left and right lanes respectively, you get something like "I-405 Everett / I-405 Renton". Unless you live in the area, how the heck are you supposed to know which of these obscure places is north or south of your current position?
I firmly believe that highway signs should be usability tested in PC-based driving simulators or something similar before they can be foisted on the public. Seriously: A little bit of effort to make these things easier to understand could help reduce the traffic snarls that develop when people get confused and slow down or, worse, have to slam on their brakes or cut across traffic at the last minute because the signs weren't clear.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
So how long before a copycat who isn't so benevolent causes mayhem by modifying a sign that deliberately messes things up?
Seen on comp.risks, please tell the guy what an idiot he is. Or if you happen to live nearby, you may try to give him a third meaning of killall, hehe...:
./configure script fails to
Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 14:52:30 -0500
From: dmaziuk@yola.bmrb.wisc.edu (Dimitri Maziuk)
Subject: GNU in Not Unix (Re: Markettos, RISKS-22.05)
Well, that particular risk is well known to professional Unix systems
administrators -- in fact, I was rather surprised to see that Linux
"killall" made the RISKS now: it's been [in]famous among Unix sysadmins for
quite a while now.
I see two issues here: one is that of false advertising, and another one --
of professionalism (not that they are entirely unrelated).
Stallman's rants about "LiGNUx" have a perfectly good technical reason
behind them: "Linux" (as in "OS based on Linux kernel and free software")
has lots of GNU software in it, and "GNU is Not Unix". Hence, Linux is
Not Unix, regardless of what Linux advocates may be telling us, it is
"GNU". (And, BTW, Unix is Not GNU.)
That was about false advertising, now let's look at professionalism.
Linux killall is perfect illustration of what happens when a product is
designed by a diletante.
Back in 1975 professionals designed an OS called Unix. Being professionals,
they realised the need for certain design principles. Such as splitting a
task into a number of smaller subtasks and designing a separate tool to
handle each subtask (that does one thing, and does it well)[0].
For example, shutting down a computer involves flushing (synchronizing) file
buffers to disk ("sync"), killing all running processes ("killall"), and
powering off the machine ("poweroff", at least on Solaris). All perfectly
neat and logical.
Along comes a layman who is unaware of the above principle, nor of
the significant "prior art"[1]. Result? -- read Theo's message.
(Various observations to show that isn't such a big problem (in
no particular order):
* professionals already know that similarly-named utilities often
behave differently on different operating systems,
* GNU folks never intended to uphold the aforementioned design
principle in the first place (see EMACS), so no surprises there,
after all, you'll only run "killall" on a Unix once.)
We have a bigger problem with another Unix principle: source code
portability.
As software becomes more complex, it requires more sophisticated build
tools. More and more open source software is being developed using GNU
compilers and build tools, and it is becoming dependant on them. The result?
-- While portability at the level of each compilation unit is still
maintained, the whole thing is not portable anymore. It fails to build on
non-GNU systems[2].
GNU project in particular did a great service to software community by
promoting and popularizing free software. It also did a great disservice by
turning the whole thing into a political issue, and pretty much ignoring the
need for competence and expertise on the part of software developers.
Instead of sound software engineering, we now have "Free Speech"
flag-waving[3].
With more companies (individuals, governments) jumping on Linux bandwagon,
the situation becomes eerily reminiscent of the recent dot-com boom; back
then we had The Internet and e-words, now we have Open Source and
Linux. Back then a few cautionary voices drowned in marketing hype, now
they're likely to be branded Paid Advocates of Evil Entertainment Industry
and Oppressors of Free Speech[tm] -- so they shut up and go learn Plan9, or
something.
(BTW, if it sounds like I'm singling GNU out, I'm not. Microsoft
et al., did at least as much as GNU to get us where we are now.
The whole thing would be very different if there was e.g. a
liability clause in every software license.)
But the $15 question remains: would you board an airplane designed by, say,
2nd year biology student as a night-time hobby? So what makes you think
their software design skills are any better?
Hmm. This came out sounding like a rant. Well, it probably is.
Dima
[0] Various aspects of the problems related to complex software systems are
very familiar to RISKS readers. They come up in, what? -- every other RISKS
issue? 25+ years ago Unix authors were well aware of them, too.
[1] Irix and Solaris "killall", for examle, behave like HP-UX one -- not
surprising, considering the "grand scheme of things" outlined above.
[2] Anyone who ever tried building open source software on Solaris using
native build tools knows that 9 times out 10 GNU "libtool" fails to link
shared libraries. The remaining 1 time GNU
determine compiler flags to make position-independent code (needed for said
libraries). And since GNU compiler and build tools are unable to produce
64-bit code on Solaris, the libraries, and all software that uses them must
be built as 32-bit binaries. Now, why did I pay for that 64-bit hardware,
again?
[3] And instead of one Shakespeare, we have a zillion monkeys with C
compilers. As history of Usenet shows, we shouldn't expect them to come up
with even "Hello World" anytime soon, not to mention "Hamlet".
Hey.... your sig is the same as mine!
From: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~opa/ur/pranks.html
In 1988, a group of students pulled off the biggest prank at Rice. They rotated the 2,000 pound statue of William Marsh Rice 180 degrees, making Willy face Fondren Library for the first time in 58 years.
"We were sitting in the pub drinking beer, and we decided something had to be done," says John Q. Smith '86, who helped mastermind the operation. After two futile attempts, the pranksters decided the third time had to be the charm.
Three electrical engineers, two mechanical engineers, a civil engineer, a mathematical scientist, a biochemist, a chemist, a physicist and an English major put their brains and brawn together to carry out the elaborate scheme.
Using plans of the statue taken from Fondren Li-brary, they simulated the transfer load through a computer model. They built two 24- foot A-frames, which they painted black to blend with the night, and put a beam on top that supported a three ton hoist in the middle and two one ton hoists on the sides.
The A-frames were tested at an off-campus garage by lifting a 2,250-pound Toyota that was swung back and forth to simulate rotation. A pair of Houston police officers looked on after being told the car hoisting was "a senior research project. "
These same police officers stopped the students as they were hauling the A-frames back to campus. Convinced it was only a school project, the officers gave the students a police escort to Entrance 8.
Lookouts and decoys positioned themselves around the Quad and communicated to each other through walkie-talkies using code names from the X-Men comic book series. The light on Anderson Hall had been turned off every night for the two previous weeks. Each morning the pranksters reconnected the light so that physical plant people would not replace it.
In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Apri112, 1988, before the sun came up, Willy sat facing the library. Only one student was caught, Patrick Dyson '88, and was made to pay the cost of turning the statue to its rightful position.
Students rallied behind Dyson and sold T -shirts that read, "Where There's A Willy, There's a Way. " More than enough money was collected to pay the cost of restoring Willy to his familiar perspective.
What took the pranksters one hour and cost $400 to do took professional movers three hours and a rumored $1,500-$2,000 to remedy. The students were blamed for breaking a guide pin underneath the statue, but they claim the professional movers did that.
Reports of the prank quickly spread across the country with the help of the media.
"People are going to have a hard time beating this one," comments a contented Smith.
Well, maybe. But Rice students don't have excellent minds for nothing and they know quite well that a masterminded prank is a terrible thing to waste.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
As CalTrans had already created this particular sign, and similar forms of prior art exist all across this country, this is not art. This guy did a flagrant plagiarism, and moreover he craftily attempted to cover up his act of counterfieture.
SHAME!
and no one will question you. I foudn this out when i removed a street sign during the middle of rush our traffic in Pittsburgh. If you look official no one stops you, not even the policeman that walked by underneath me. You'd think he might have noticed i didn't have a safety harnass on.....
judos to guerilla ops
-shpoffo
I typed up a description of what happened in the video for the benefit of visually impaired slashdotters. Here it goes:
For the first seventeen seconds, the disembodied head of Richard Ankrom floats mysteriously in front of his road sign as it talks about his project in a spooky, ominous voice.
In the next scene (you can hear the music change), you see him carefully examining a post with the INTERSTATE 5 symbol. The camera changes to a close up so you can see him comparing the blue of the shield a a color wheel he holds againts the sign.
Another scene change. Now Rick is on a bridge, looking down along the road sign attached to its side. He takes out his ruler... suddenly a big ruler fades, phantom-like, into the middle of the screen! The background fades into Rick's pepective, looking down at the road below as the cars drive underneath him--yet the ruler... remains! It moves further away, then closer, and starts to slide to the right as the background switches to the original view of the scene. Rick disappears as he bends behind the sign...
...and now a white-gloved hand rubbing a cloth over the pencil-outlined letters "RS"... the camera zooms out... "ERS"... "TERST"... now the camera is so far away that you can no longer recognize the letters. All you see in that same mysterious hand--now attached to an arm--rubbing what looks like dirt on a white surface. Wait... now you can see an outline! Its an interstate shield!
As the significance of this realization grips us, the rubbing hand fades away to a shadow... and then two shadows... and then none.
The camera has now pulled back to the point where we can catch a glimmer of Rick's chest--apparantly he is standing by his drawing. He walks to the side, and starts to roll it up--revealing a white shield lying underneath it!
The camera zooms... we are just able to make out the word "interstate" as the image changes.
We can now see the letters "ERST", only now in thicker pencil. Some sort of pale coloring lies ever the E... wait! That coloring is actually a sheet, which Rick is now using to cover "RST". You can only see his hand as it sets it down. His thumb rubs the top of the sheet, and then his fingers do the rest. The world becomes fuzzy...
We see the letters "RST"--the "E" presumably being covered by his hand. A ruler lies underneath the letters, oriented such that the numbers read upside-down to us. He traces along the ruler with a sharp object as hand and ruler and object all fade into oblivion, leaving only the letters. His hand mysteriously fades in and out at different positions and angles, cutting away at the outlines of different letters. A piece of his forehead pops into the scene, and then...
We see him peeling off the pale covering--yet pieces of it now remain where the letter outlines had been traced.
Now the angle shifts. We are now looking down at the word "INTERSTATE" from the right. He is applying some sort of pale tan tape to the top of the words. These hands start to fade away as another pair of hands fades in, applying tape to the left side. (The arms remain hidden.)
The image now dissolves into a completely new scene. We look down at both of his arms and hands donned in white gloves as one hang scoups green paint out of a can being held by the second. A color table lies sprawling open on the wooden table beneath.
The camera zooms out a little as his right hand stirrs the paint.
The hands fade away... now we see him (even a portion oh his head!) carefully comparing a rectangle he his holding in his hand to the aforemetioned color table.
Dissolution steals this image and replaces it with another. We are now outdoors. We can see Rick frow the abdomin up, facing us, and spraying red paint over our eyes. As the image is covered with this foggy red, the image transitions to a more solid red, with the clear white words "Pantone Color 199-200" at the bottom.
The red disappears as quickly (yet as gradually) as it appeared. We now see Rick spraying red the top of the interstate shield as it lies up-side down against some sort of rectangular prop covered in cloth.
The spray-paint disappears and the red paint on the sign becomes... green? Ah, no, it is now being covered with a green sheet as Rick sprays the top of the sign blue.
The red words "Pantone Color 293" fade onto the bottom, ominously, and then vanish as mysteriously as they had appeared.
A fast fade... now we see him spraying green onto some sort of table lying not far off the tiled ground... and green slowly blends into the scene along with the white words "Pantone Color 340-341" until both dominate... but once they do, the letters fade and a hand moves into our vision.
The hand peels away... an R! Realization dawns upon us as the angle changes to show him peeling off the letter to its right.
The scene changes again. Now we shee the shield standing upright, in its glorious red, white, and blue, as his hands, reaching from the top of our vision, cut away an "E" and completing the white word "INTERSTATE" at the top of the sign. He then peels off the last of the border lying at the top on the sign.
His body now fades into the right of the screen, starting to peel... something from the middle of the sign. The camera zooms into his hands... both hands are now peeling away at...
The bottom of a 5 appears in our vision, filled with several strange circles. His hand reaches from the bottom of our vision, grabs, and removes one of the circles.
Our vision grows blurry... now we see the bottom of a drill, as the hand repeatedly squezes the handle.
Quick fade.. we see some sort of nozzle being pressed against a small disc held by three of his fingers. We zoom in and watch as the nozzle squirts glue which Rick traces into a circle. This being done, the nozzle is pulled away...the scene changes...
...and we watch as the same hand now PUTS BACK the circle it had earlier removed from the 5!
Dramatic music and scene change. We now see Rick from a birds-eye view as he walks along a sidewalk next to a highway... he gets smaller as the camara soars higher. He approaches a hanging overhead road sign.
Our vision quickly flicks to a new scene, where we now see him much closer, almost completely obscured by greenery as he lays a ladder againts a large, metal pole.
The scene again changes abruptly, now showing us pole and ladder from a side view. We zoom into the ladder...
And switch back whence we came. Now Rick is climbing up his ladder....
Ane now we are like an eyeball floating in space, peering at Rick from a moderate distance as he makes it to the top of the ladder. We see him toss some white object (his towel?) onto a porch under the sign.
For a single instant, our vision changos, showing him leaning down and doing something next to the left side of the sign. Less than a second later we now see him climbing a stepladdep as he carries the word "NORTH" in white on a green background. It looks as if a piece of the sign was missing (or is it just a board lying against the sign?)...
...before we can ponder this thought for too long, the angle switches again. Now we see him from above and to the side as he mounts the right side of "NORTH" to the road sign. (It was a board, by-the-way.)
The scene has changed again. Now we see him kneeling on the "porch" under the sign on the right side... it looks as if he is prying or pulling a blue shield with a 5 on it out of a black bag.
The camera again flicks back, now showing Rick as he carries his shield over to the left side. We hear voices.
Now we are closer to him and see him lifting the shield against the sign... now we are above him and watch as he uses his electric screwdriver to mount it into place.
We watch from behind as he now removes the wooden board, first on the ladder, then on the porch (a tricky task, seeing as NORTH and 5 were both mounted over it for some reason). The 5 droops to the side... the scene changes and now we watch him fixing it.
The image becomes blurry and turbulent. Red words appear in two lines along the bottom of the screen: "Camera 3: Mark Concha" and "Driver/Grip: Markus Hays"
We see, vaguely (since our vision is shaking around) a man on a platform on a metal pole... another man breifly enters our vision.
Our vision stops jolting as terribly, but is now a touch unfocused. It is now directed directly at the road sign, and zooms in to the man as he walks across the porch.
Everything becomes much clearer and the words at the bottom disappear. We watch a little above and from a moderate distance (just far enough away to see the entire hanging road sign) as Rick takes down his ladder and carries it back to the right side of the sign. As he is about 1/2 of the way across the scene changes to show him climbing back down the ladder and to the ground.
Fade to black.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
..it happened that the Pope was anxious to have the walls of the great Cathedral of St. Peter at Rome decorated. So he sent messengers all over Italy to find out who were the best painters, that he might invite them to come and do the work.
...
the messengers came to Giotto and told him their errand. The Pope, they said, wished to see one of his drawings to judge if he was fit for the great work. Giotto, who was always most courteous, `took a sheet of paper and a pencil dipped in a red colour, then, resting his elbow on his side, with one turn of the hand, he drew a circle so perfect and exact that it was a marvel to behold.'
`Here is your drawing,' he said to the messenger, with a smile, handing him the drawing.
...
The Pope and his advisers looked carefully over all the drawings, and, when they came to that round O, they knew that only a master-hand could have made such a perfect circle without the help of a compass. Without a moment's hesitation they decided that Giotto was the man they wanted, and
they at once invited him to come to Rome to decorate the cathedral walls.
On a similar note, many portions of the Interstate Highway system were designed with certain lengths of straight sections to accomodate emergency landings by military aircraft in the event of war (well, invasion really) with the assumption that airfields would be a primary target in any attack. I'm not sure about the veracity of this, but a one or two mile long concrete (or even asphalt) stretch would probably do nicely for a fighter to land on (anything bigger would probably destroy the road). In good weather in daylight, anyway.
This guy's a genius, not only does he pay taxes to get this kind of stuff done in the first place, he decides to take the time to make the sinage from scratch and blow probably 30+ manhours in his actual construction and documentation processes. Then tries to sell it as art, even though it's a non-original work that he specifically copied from existing sources and then tries to capitalize on it afterwards...
01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
On those occassions when I'm speaking on the phone, I am looking at the road. How can anyone fail to react to his surroundings when he is looking at them? Not to be a eugenicist, but anyone who can't simultaneously think of something to say and realize that he needs to hit the brakes will not be missed from the gene pool. It's just unfortunate that he will probably interrupt my sandwich-making.
later,
Jess
p.s. I somehow doubt that the sign control system in the picture got hacked. It seems more likely that someone GIMPed the message in.
I am programmed for etiquette, not destruction!
Keep in mind that there is more to his creation than just a finished highway sign.
Besides, if paintings of soup cans (over and over and over) are art, why not facsimiles of roadsigns masquerading as roadsigns?
Nothing like another Slashdot story peeled from the folds of fark.com
"All your base are belong to this file I send in order to have your advice."
Since the tcp/ip stack simply describes a way in which machines may exchange electronic signals, any group of people who own machines may use any alternative that they like. This confusion of the Internet with literal highways is a misuse of metaphor that does real harm to a free society. From the fact that a 16-ft-wide area in which the general public operates vehicles of varying tonnages at speeds in excess of 60 mph needs a modicum of regulation, please don't deduce that the internet needs it as well.
later,
Jess
--
Socrates was banished for his views. I expect no less from our 'modern' society.
Umm, I thought he was executed. Would you expect that?
I am programmed for etiquette, not destruction!
Yep - check out the reflection of the original message on the side of the truck.
Living better through chemicals
On I-94 heading between Racine and Milwaukee, you can find large signs on both sides of the highway announcing "Bong Recreation Center". No lie!
Also, for more fun, check out the crap with Ohio's roads, at http://www.roadfan.com/. One of the oldest highway systems sits in northeast Ohio.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
that guy is freaky deaky!!!
Loosely related story:
There is a sign heading west on the 210 freeway before the exit to Caltech that says "Caltech" on one line and "Pasadena City College" on a second line underneath. One year (1991 maybe) a small group of people from Harvey Mudd added parentheses around Pasadena City College...
Gotta love US 666 though, I think there are two of them, but my friends... uh... borrowed a sizeable US-666 construction sign (orange and evil looking) from Gallup, New Mexico. They live in Michigan, so perhaps the sign for Hell will be missing someday.
If he comes here he will find with a FULL TIME job at hands...
With so many wrongly signaled exits and outdated signals he would work 7/24 at least for one year!
Cheers...
When the Russians (and Hungarians and Polish...) invaded Prague in 1968, the Czechs removed ALL the street signs so that they couldn't find their way around. It worked, only too well: a confused Russian machine-gunned the National Museum, thinking it was the House of Parliament. Go Figure.
Check out the following for a real whacky road sign.
a bt . tml
http://www.digitalnorseman.com/musings/2002/rnd
Is it time to go home yet?
It is a good piece of art because it reminds us that the person who builds the system (the road authority) will not necessarily anticipate the information needs of those who use it (joe drivers).
;-)
The solution was rather a drastic hack. The road authority should run a website where you could make suggestions for improved signage. These could be implemented in an economic manner when the signs are upgraded for other reasons.
It's the same thing with software: it's good to design it right: but you're still going to have to capture the thoughts of naive users when they encounter it for the first time, and take their expectations into account when you're upgrading the product.
Here in Hackney in East London we had a political sign hack for a while: someone converted a local route sign from miles to kilometres, presumably to make a point about closer integration with Europe. No one seemd to bother about it for ages, though it was quite a kludge-y job (the material on which the kilometer distances was printed was a noticeably different shade from the rest of the sign).
Then some anti-Euro hacks raised Cain in the local newspaper and the council got round to restoring the sign. No one ever claimed responsibility for it. I quite liked it myself: I prefer to cycle kilometres rather than miles because you go further.
You can never eat too much, only cycle too little.
hack the highways if only you bought me a delorean.
but there are no dots and precious few signs. And as the poster from New York pointed out, dots and signs or no, it's still a really stupid idea to do thinks like that.
What is your Slash Rating?
Where on earth do you think the IRA get most of their funding?
Where do you think Al Qaeda got their funding before the Russians left Afghanistan?
Where do the guerillas in Nicaragua get their funding?
And so on...
Deleted
While I'm skeptical about calling this "art," you've got to congratulate the guy for saving Californians some cash money by doing for free something that "had to be done." After that Oracle fiasco, they'll need to save every penny of tax dollars they can.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Check this map to see our really wacked beltline. Notice the small "triangle" of freeway at the left side of the city between Raleigh and Cary. The uppor portion is the Wade Ave. Extension, which lets people going between north Raleigh and I-40 make the transition without going to the southwest corner of the beltline.
:) If you are on the southern portion of the beltline going west, you have the advantage of avoiding the clover-leaf design, but you still have a one-lane switch, or you find yourself headed north on I-40 until you reach the Wade Ave. Extension, where you head back west.
Now, if you look at the interchange marker right above the words "Piney Points" and to the left of "Caraleigh", you will see where our beltline meets itself at a 90 degree angle. At this point, if you are going southwest on the beltline you literally have to take a right hand turn onto a one-lane clover-leaf to get back onto the interstate. If you don't, you find yourself passing through Apex
I've been here almost 2 years, and it took me a good 3 months to get used to that.
What is your Slash Rating?
dont these people have anything better to do with their life?
An old boss of mine (from when I used to work on Aviation Parkway) is running technology meetings every couple months over on Perimiter Park. Drop me an email and I'll let you know when the next one is set for and how to get there.
;)
It's nice being able to work downtown now since I don't have to do the Lynn Road Rat Race or the I-40 Crawl. Then again...now I do the Falls of the Neuse 500
Anyhow...time for a shower and off to work. See my site for an email address.
What is your Slash Rating?
How about that for a sign that's open to misinterpretation. "Lousy place for littering" might be more understandable.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Hey, that's MY sig, but I've always heard it being attributed to Voltaire. Anybody know who's quote it really is?
do not read this line twice.
There is a fine line between art and graffiti, and this man successfully walked that line.
Part performance, part painting, part film, it covers a lot.
Um, why don't they just use a map?
And considering that the US military personel COME from the states, why don't they just get a guy who came from the area to direct them?
Honestly. It's a highway. Like a big black line. Follow the big black line until you reach the city you need to control. They can't be more specific than that because cities grow and change.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I seem to remember reading about this somewhere. I believe the original specs for the interstate system said that one out of every 5 miles had to be straight and uncovered, so that an airplane could land, in an emergancy, or if the local airport he it was aimimg for had been destroyed or bombed.
About 5 years ago, a small 4 passenger airplane landed on I-95 in Florida, so it worked. (:
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
I'll just note (not that these are anywhere near as common as they were 8 months ago) that many places around here had those little movable-letters signs up saying "GOD BLESS AMERICA".
A minute or so with an anagram generator will tell you that those letters can be rearranged into "SAD MOB SACRILEGE". As I said, not that it's anywhere near as useful now as a few months ago, but the phrase could always come back in vogue.
So are comments art?
Cary (which was recently featured in a National Geographic issue (like...July 2001 or something)) is a city on the southwest of Raleigh and the southeast of Chapel Hill (relatively speaking). It's where the high-lifestyle crowd live because they like to pay for a high rent district. (That's not a troll...just the truth). It has wierd intersecting and name-changing roads all over the place. It has at least two roads which circle the city and intersect with each other. I get horribly lost whenever I go there. In fact, the words I dread hearing when someone starts giving me directions there are It's easy to find, because I know immediately I'm going to wind up lost.
Lest you think that I joke or exaggerate, I'm told that "Cary" is also an acronym for "Containment area for relocated Yankees."
What is your Slash Rating?
Your analogy is a little flawed. He didn't determine how the system should operate, he simply implemented a bug fix. I would argue that he applied an open source concept to the public roadways.
As much as the average 'Joe' would like to think they can make decisions for the rest of the world, sometimes there are some things that experts know more about. And yes, sometimes bureacracy gets in the way - but just imagine if we allowed your average person on the street to dictate how a tcp/ip stack should be implemented, or what have you.
Planetes
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promo Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitl
According to Google, it's Voltaire's.
What I'd like to know is who said something like: "As long as we can keep the right from starting a war, and the left from selling us into slavery, we'll be ok."
Why did GEAR crush RDP?
-jon
Remember Amalek.
For example, they are building the 540 outer loop around Raleigh. Also, DC and other cities have two concentric beltlines, usually (iirc), one with an odd digit and one with an even digit.
What is your Slash Rating?
Nice hack :-))
:-( ).
On John Lennon's 50th birthday (in 1990), I remember some signs on the Lenin prospect (actually, some house numbers) in St.Petersburg (the original one in Russia, you copycats...) were repainted in the same font to read "Lennon prospect" (which, unfortunately, was replaced by the authorities back to original in just 2 days or so
VKh
There was a bank in Holland, MI that had a sign offering "Totally Free Checking" (in big letters) when I was in college a few years back. I knew a guy who did something similar to the guy in this article: he created false letters to match the ones on the sign exactly. He altered the sign so that it read "Totally Free Chicken". He walked into the bank a little while later, and told them with a completely straight face that he was there to get the Totally Free Chicken they were offering. The bank took down the sign, but I don't think he was ever caught.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
He also wanted to prove that one highly disciplined individual can make a difference.
Then get a job, hippy.
Sorry, but that isn't true: It is an urban legend. It makes sense too, there are already hundreds if not thousands of strips in the country, why do we need thousands more?
The system was designed to move troops an armor. The byproduct was a "great" network of roads to move civilians around the country. Eisenhower was a very smart but paranoid man.
The authorities eventually got wise and the signs now read "LOVELOCK 70".
Caltrans is removing its dark green signs with reflector dots on the letters and numbers. The replacements are light green and totally reflectorized. Eventually, exits will be numbered, too.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
My dad was a division manager for a southern california construction company that did work for California Division of Highways and the federal government a lot. Anyway, he had a buddy who complaigned to him that he had a dangerous intersection near his house that really needed a stop sign. He asked my dad about the process of getting the city to put one up. My dad just ordered him an extra sign the next time he ordered signs. He had the guy pay him the $18 the stop sign cost, then helped him put it up. The guy asked "won't they notice?". Not only didn't they notice, the cops even gave some guy a ticket for running it about a week after they put it up.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I love "conspiracy theories", and the one about secret codes on signs seems pretty neat. I have heard the same thing about open stretches of highway, as well.
What I want to know about, is the "generators" on the interstates.
What do I mean by "generators"?
Some of the older interstate highways (I-17 here in Phoenix is a good example) are typically placed "below grade", that is, the surrounding roads and land are higher than the freeway, and rarely does the freeway rise to meet the grade - you travel in what is basically a concrete "chute" or "canyon".
What is interesting, and they seem to be mostly located near the off ramps, or at the end of the off ramps (but still near the freeway), are these concrete "bunkers", with large exhaust pipes sticking out of them (sometimes they aren't this blatent) - obviously a large diesel engine of some sort. I have never seen these engines run. I don't understand why they are in large concrete and steel bunkers, with walls 12-18 inches thick, thick gauge steel mesh covering openings (like that the exhaust pipes stick out from), heavy duty locks, etc - buried in the side of the concrete "chute" of the freeway or exit.
I don't know what they are for - for the size of the engine, they seem like large power generators. I suppose they could be used for water pumping as well (for the city or for flooding).
Does anyone know the purpose of these things?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
As one person once said, "the traffic roundabout is evidenced of the misplaced belief in the basic goodness of human nature."
So far the only good story I've heard WRT a roundabout was told by one of the English denizens of #slashdot. It seems he was driving his car when the gas pedal stuck...and the brakes wouldn't work. Fortunately, he had already entered a roundabout, so he just kept cruising around it until he ran out of gas.
What is your Slash Rating?
Agreed.
The signage in L.A. really stinks. Simple changes could save millions of hours, fuel, and frustration if added up over time.
For example, it would be nice if they painted the upcomming freeway numbers *on* the lanes a few times so that one knows whether they are in the right lane or not.
I was even thinking that a truck fitted with something like a big inkjet print head could paint such numbers without shutting down the freeway (assuming only a few lane-changers run over it before it dries. They could do it at say 3am.)
And, put the word "only" in lanes that will soon exit. One lane around here needs "NO FWY" painted on it a few times because people keep thinking it turns onto the freeway, and when they find out it is only a street left, they try to barge back in the next lane, and cause havoc.
Nobody seems to want to fix crap like that.
He is a hero in my book. I think I will go visit it next week to solute it.
Table-ized A.I.
So you have some free energy to volunteer for public works. Why be a road luser. Roads and cars are polluting, ugly systems, and don't take voluntary input like other more elegent systems.
Much better to work on volunteer run railways. These provide a truly egalitarian transport system. You can paint and install signs to your heart's content. I've painted signs for one of these railways - I never knew painting signs for a transport system was such a renegade thing to do. If you want you can learn to drive a locomotive. Become a gaurd. Get your coding hands dirty with the information and signalling systems. Get your real hands dirty building and repairing stock. And, yes, these railways are in some cases becoming large enough to provide socially useful transport.
The authorities are responsible for taking out your trash? Where do you live?! I'm moving there!
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Don't know if anyone has pointed this out. Fun for office, home or bedroom without risking cops after your ass lol http://www.kurumi.com/roads/signmaker/signmaker.ht ml
Works best with color printer of course...
My current hobby is donating movies to my local library with spare money. Not just any movies, but movies at the movies at the top of IMDB's fan favorite lists in each category. The Brevard County Public Libraries now have Grave of the Fireflies and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, thanks to me.
a means of communicating to other people.
The sign was not the art; the performance of planning and installing the sign was intentionally art. The installation was self consciously filmed as an artistic "event", a form of conceptual art. By getting members of the Los Angeles art community to agree that the performance was art, it thereby became actual and authentic art. It's all sort of suspicious. I think it's actually marketing or sales...
Take a good look at how the real essence of art
is being debauched by weak shit like this.
How does this kind of work change the world,
wake up an individual?
101 South
to 85 South
to 280 South
to 101 South
?
all while going South!!!
He even chopped off his shoulder-length blond hair to fit the role of a blue-collar freeway worker.
This is obviously one artist who does not do much construction work. If he did, he would see all lengths of hair. Caltrans may have some rules, but I doubt it.
There are some other things our artist might not know about that could cause severe injury or death. How about standard safe work practices? Did our razor wire hopping hero have a lanyard to keep his silly ass from falling into oncoming traffic? Was his scafolding proper? Did this joker use the right metals for his fasteners or will galvanic corosion kill someone one day as his sign rusts off its holder? No amount of money saved is worth life and limb, and this turkey risked his own and others to do this.
Experience here in the computer world does not translate well to the physical world of public trasportation. Stunts played on bridges can kill people. Hacking my computer is useful to me, and may be helpful to other willing users of my code, but it will never physically hurt anyone. In this case, education, training, peer review and all checks were absent. These things are fostered in the free and open software movements. The artist swung his fist, ignorant of the faces he will hit.
I'd like to see him held accountable for the cost of fixing things, just like any other contractor. At the very least, the work must be inspected and verified. He may have improved the signage, but it's doubtful his job is really up to specs and it will likely have to be torn down at the expense of more important work.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hey guys - the whole "so what makes something art" question isn't exactly new... The ancient dead greek guy started trying to define thought and reality, and generally to put everyting into neat little boxes. Definitions of this style are "SubjectX IS:" and for hundreds of year - heck, millenia - the definition "Art IS:..." has eluded and stymied pundits, critics, artists, and various other flavors of Raging Egos(tm). Current art theory seems to think that art is defined by who does it and who accepts it - if you aren't part of the art world, then nothing you do can possibly be art - but any 'recognized' artist can legitimately market meaningless tripe as 'ART!' and we plebians can't be expected to understand it.
Just my two cents and old notes from an aestetics class.
I have no Sig.