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Mystery Tiles From Around the World
puppetman writes "The Kansas City Star has an interesting story about Toynbee Tiles.
They show up embedded in streets, and can be found in the US (Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Aberdeen, Edgewood, Washington, etc), Chile, Argentina and Brazil. They are made of "epoxy or super hard plastic that's actually inlaid in the asphalt itself."
The tiles invariably state, "Toynbee Ideas in Kubrick's 2001 Resurrect Dead On Planet Jupiter".
Sometimes there are secondary tiles that request people make more while others are of a more paranoid slant.
Toynbee was a religious historian who believed that "well-being of a civilization depends on its ability to respond successfully to challenges, human and environmental". There is even a Ray Bradbury book, The Toynbee Convector.
Toynbee.net has a link to a Usenet posting where someone ask's Kubrick's daughter if the man himself knew of the tiles.
To date, the origin of the tiles are a mystery. Any /.'ers able to provide the location of additional tiles, or perhaps clues for solving the mystery?"
...for a nice, orderly queue under this posting, so we can avoid cluttering the main topic.
So, where are all the tiles? Who knows, but it sounds like a fun thing to geocache for. :)
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
In a few weeks they'll all light up and you'll realize they form concentric circles around a just-constructed used car joint.
...and all we get are these lousy tiles.
Seriously, thinking about 2001 depresses me. When I was a kid I had every expectation we'd be flying around in Pan Am Space Shuttles and learning how to use zero-g toilets.
Instead we live in a world where Pan Am goes bankrupt, and NYC still hasn't figured out how to install restrooms in the city.
These tiles are nothing more than a cruel reminder of just how lame the 21st century is turning out to be.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
But only in the early 80's. Since the quality and durability of pavement here in Brazil is approximately the same as chicken crap, streets get paved and repaved every decade or so. They're long gone.
Slashdotted, some images in a google cache further down, here's the text though.
Google Cache
I am NaN
i have seen those here, in Philadelphia, for a long time (i guess since the 80's?) and kind of like the author i never understood them, but once the light turned green, i got on my way and totally forgot about them.
/. effect wears off you can look up your town's documented tiles.
i honestly could not tell you where they are, but after seeing the picture it came back. i don't remember what the local ones say but the style of text in the same and the size of the tiles and whatnot.
for people in Philly, i am 99% sure there is one in a crosswalk on South street maybe around 4th and south? i guess when the
If no more of these are appearing, maybe it is the old (now dead) guy in the article. He published an article about resurrecting dead on Jupiter, and he lived in philly where these first appeared.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Yes, it's true, any persons caught trying to decipher the mystery of the Toynbee Tiles will be prosecuted under the DMCA. Listen, just because you can go out into public and read these mysterious tiles does not mean that you have the mysterious right to try and mysteriously figure out where they mysteriously came from. That is the exclusive mysterious right of the mysterious man/woman in [insert color here] who placed these in the first not-so-mysterious place to begin with.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
Well, theoretically here's one. When I can duck out and drive across the country to verify it, I'll let you know ;)
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For now, geocache away, Toynbee followers!
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_
For a message board on this topic, go here (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/3790/geoboo
I've seen a large number of these mysterious tiles. They too have strange writing on them, which sometimes makes lewd suggestions or tells offensive jokes. I have always wondered how that writing was created on all those tiles. I've usually noticed these mystery tiles in restrooms stalls at schools, offices, and even airports in many major cities around the world! It's good to know people are starting to investigate the matter.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
"It's probably a man, because the tiles are obviously installed at night since nobody seems to have witnessed them being put in. It's unlikely a woman would risk being alone at night in a downtown environment."
Yeah, as if a person insane enough to put prophecy tiles into asphalt would drop the idea due to risk of being alone in a downtown environment.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
I had a similar experience in Vienna/Austria. One day by accident I saw the words on an ad poster translated to latin (or some warped form of it), in pencil, all caps, about 0.7 mm high. I thought nothing of it. But having seen this one item, I suddenly saw them everywhere. I realized that in my neighborhood nearly all the names of the residents were translated (pencil, caps, ...) on the front doors. I saw timetables on bus stops translated. I started to open my eyes to it in other districts of the city. Bingo, there they were - names, ads, traffic signs, basically everything on the streets you could translate and write on had a good chance to carry them, and I kept seeing them for 12 years all over the city, until I moved away (no, not for this reason :) ;o)
There were times when I thought of charting them and trying to find out who the guy is (yes, I had nothing much to do), but I reminded myself of what can happen when one goes overboard with those things and thought better of it
A crackpot, sure, but one with a hell of a determination
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Reminds me of a paving slab in the corner of the Domplatz (cathedral square) in Koeln (Cologne - damn Slashdot's hatred of HTML entities), Germany. When I was there in the early nineties, there was the big Friedenmauer (peace-wall) - generally a post unification, end-of-history, anti-Gulf-War kind of thing - and the square was a really busy centre of demonstrators, artists and so on. Over in one corner, one of the slabs had, engraved into it, "This could be a place of historical importance". At the time, when everybody was kind of filled with a sense of capital-H history going on all around them, what with the end of the cold war, and atlases going out of date left right and centre, this seemed like a fairly profound statement - and probably encouraged the Friedenmauer builders to think that maybe they could make a difference.
Seeing this story finally inspired me to Google this phrase, and it turns out to have been the work of one Braco Dimitrijevic, and apparently other similar slabs can be found around St Martin's College in London.
Obviously no Kubrick reference, so not so geeky, but still a pretty cool bit of public-space art.
In some cities, the standard "Toynbee tile" is accompanied by smaller adjacent tiles that express sentiments such as:
Submit. Obey.
Could this be an attempt to link into the Obey phenomenon? Sure, the tiles started in the 80's, but perhaps a new breed of social engineers are trying to plug us into the idea of examining our surroundings?
Or maybe some folks think that graffetti doesn't have to be a bad spray job that says "dave love's jessica" or "metallica rules!"
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
There's a Toynbee tile in the intersection of (IIRC) Broadway and Olive streets in downtown St. Louis. I had always seen it and thought it to be a marker left over from some art festival, etc. I never had the time to stop and read it due to the rather short nature of green lights. I had no idea there were more of them until I saw a weblog entry about this site. I clicked and instantly recognized it. I have no idea how old the tile is but it's in excellent condition.
It's in front of my office here in Cincinnati. In fact, the local alternative weekly ran an artical a few years ago.
Creepy.
There used to be one on Michigan avenue (I think around Adams) on the northwest corner in Chicago. However, when they redid the street, they just sorta covered up some of it. I believe you can still see about 1/2 of it. I never bothered reading it, I thought it was one of those weird art things that the city tends to do from time to time.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
funny thing: most of the sites that are linked to from this page seem to have ... dissapeared.
http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/15831
This post was brought to you by the number 584811 and the characters / and .
but aren't they the most filling of all tiles?
TechTV did a thing on it about a month ago...
Toynbee Mystery
Mysterious plaques with a prophetic message have been appearing all along the Eastern seaboard. Tonight, Bill O'Neill, the foremost expert in this phenomenon, joins us via netcam from Atlanta to talk about who or what is leaving these plaques and shed some light on their meaning. The plaques read:
"Toynbee Ideas
In Kubrick's 2001
Ressurect Dead
On Planet Jupiter"
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
It has a picture of a much larger tile with some sort of manifesto written in it, next to the standard Toynbee tile. (This picture is also visible from the picture gallery for the original article.)
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Again, I rarely have anything to contribute (hey, I'm an artist) to /., but I've seen these things before. This particular one is at the intersection of 5th Avenue and 40th Street in Manhattan.
Toynbee Tile here
there are sort of similar tilings, predominantly in europe, although i believe the guy (invader) who is responsible for them is currently in NY... although these aren't "profound" statements, they are really well done mosaic tiles of little space invaders!
you can check it out here. for fellow londoners who are interested...i, personally, have seen two in london. one on brick lane outside vibe bar and one in the notting hill area on some bridge that the carnival goes over - dunno which one, i live in the seeouthhhhh.
A little googling reveals that couple a years ago one journalist tracked possible responsibility for the tiles down to one "verna sevrino", who he was ultimately unable to contact, even though he had an address in philadelphia.
google turns up a funeral home in philadelphia called "verna sevrino funeral home", hmmm what might a funeral home have to do with resurrecting people on mars?
more googling turns up philadelphia councilwoman Anna C. Verna, who is married to " husband, Severino Verna, a funeral director, were born and raised in South Philadelphia.".
And finally, everything you ever wanted to know about Anna C Verna is here I, for one, welcome our new neptune resurrectionist overlord.
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
And he requested another 87 billion on TV last night!
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Actually, the book was written by Clarke after talking about the movie with Kubrick. Clarke figured the only way to truly write a great screenplay was to write the novel first. The forword of Clarke's 2001 tells us so.
Date: Wed, 03 May 2000 17:36:37 -0400
Subject: Toynbee Mystrey Solved!...(almost.)
Hello, my name is Justin K*H* and I am sending you this to let you know of my research into the "Toynbee Idea" phenomenon. I have been obsessively photographing & documenting these tiles since around 1992-'93, when I first started noticing them. I have a very extensive collection of photographs, but this is not my reason for contacting you. My reason in sending this E mail is to let you know that I have figured out EXACTLY how these tiles are "made & glued". You see, sometime this past winter I left my house on a mission to my lacal convinience store for a late Sunday night snack (about 4:00 A.M.,so perhaps "early morning snack would be more appropriate wording.) On my way back to the house I noticed a black mound in the street which had made it's appearance there sometime in the 10 minute period that I was in the store. Upon closer inspection I discovered it to be a mound of tar paper, intermingled with what appeared to be wood glue. Being the inquisitive soul that I am, I lifted the top layer to see what may lay underneath----a "TOYNBEE IDEA" TILE!!!!!( This was discovered at 12th. & Race ST. in Philadelphia, if you want to add it to your sightings list.) Needless to say, I examined the tile for quite a while, my heart racing all the while, knowing that I had missed catching the "mad tiler" by only a matter of minutes. Here are my findings - The tiles are indeed that - tiles. If you heat a standard floor tile it will rubberize and become as easy to cut as butter. But when it hardens it will not be able to withstand the pressure afforded it by car tires as it will be too brittle (I have tried making my own tiles, as you can infer.) However this tile was some kind with a higher rubber content than a standard floor tile, and therefore able to absorb greater weight and shock. It's inlayed letters were of a slightly less malleable substance, but were held in place neatly, even if they were to crack, by the white tile which surrounded them. All of this intricate stencil-esque tile work appeared to have been done with an X-acto knife or razor blade, judging by the angle of the cuts and my own failed attempts with cutting letters into standard floor tiles. The tile was sandwiched between thick layers of intricately folded and glued together tar paper. The effects of the weather(the paper decays, but the tar remains behind as an anchor to affix the tile to the street) and passing cars(they serve as the force which squashes the tile into - literally INTO - the street. Over the course of the next few days I took a series of detailed photos which display the entire process visually. I hope my explanation of all of this is understandable, and I apologize for typos ( I am in a rush. ) Anyways, I hope this gives you some sense of satisfaction as to at least HOW these "plaques" are made.
P.S. I checked out that Philly adress from the Rio tile - no luck, although I did find a SLEW of Toynbee tiles in the surrounding South Philly neighborhood. (Rather unusual for the tiles to be seen in such a residential neighborhood!) 9th. & Shunk St. is the only specific one I can think of off the top of my head. There are three tiles there which have to be seen to be believed. O.K......Put up my sightings & mention my findings! Thank You, Justin K*H*