March 07, 2008

• I like it. Clean, elegant, and totally un-navigable if you don't live there. Fuck the tourists!
• It's beautiful.
• São Paulo recently implemented a controversial ban on all outdoor advertising which seems to have had a very similar effect.
• Good idea. A ban on ads might lead to more stuff like the OXO tower, built to get round a ban on illuminated ads - but so much the better.
• That's just lovely. I like the OXO tower too.
• Wow! I didn't hear about that islander. But they have left all the skeletons and that looks plain ugly. The thought that favelas have been hidden from view by giant billboards is just mind bending.
• Well, the lack of people kind of adds to the creepy effect, too.
• I agree TUM. Needs more zombies.
• Looks like the movie sets at the major studios out in L.A. between movies.... barren, generic
• There, that's better.
• Or maybe...
• Right. Add cars, people, and trash to make it all look less creepy.
• No, it's creepy.
• I finished lunch early.
• *hearts TUM yet more*
• Is it just me, or do these images all have a 1960's - early 1970's look and feel to them? Was there really that much less clutter and signage on the streets back then, or is it all in my head? If you weren't around back then and don't know what I'm talking about...get the hell off my lawn.
• I love you guys!!!
• I do know what you mean, rocket88. It's hard to put a finger on, but there did seem to be less...stuff around. Plus the square, un-elegant buildings in so many of them remind me of my childhood.
• A bit hard to navigate, but the pictures at this blog illustrate the 70s mall. Note how few big, bright signs there are.
• I find it creepy that we do find those scenes creepy. We're so used to advertising & graphic assault that the alternative upsets us. Just like with security cameras on the streets. Visiting cities where they're not so widespread, one realizes the madness of the panopticon many of us are in, living on the megalopolises. Is that a dog-zombie, TUM?
• > Was there really that much less clutter and signage on the streets back then Movies from that particular period of antiquity would suggest that yes, there was quite a lot less clutter.
• The images remind me of a feeling i had watching this scene from Wild Strawberries. If I remember my trivia, the city block in that clip was shot by night and lit up artificially, for the dreamlike efffect it heightened.
• R. C. Maxwell Company is partly to blame.
• 
• Nice link, kerinth! But who is that mysterious figure haunting the moustache wax factory? ;-)
• The creep-out effect isn't too sinister. Removing the signage strips away a layer of evidence of human occupancy. Removing all the people, cars, and trash strips away another level. What we're left with is a modern city without any evidence of inhabitants. Of course it seems creepy! I think the point would be stronger if all of the signs had been blacked out (but left in place). Or if he had included before/after shots. (For those of us not intimately familiar with the downtown streets of Warsaw.)
• Also: Clone Stamp tool FTW!
• There's a New Zealand painter called Peter Siddell whose paintings of Auckland cityscapes are like this, and it's all I can think of when I look at these photos. His are pretty much always Edwardian homes, though.
• What I think we are discussing here is not really a removal of advertising per se (as we understand commercial advertising) -- it's a removal of all markers of location or destination. And I think that's what creates the surreal/creepy effect.
• Tracicle, that painting is downright eerie. I think it's the dark windows that look like eyes, empty eyes, staring into the middle distance... so many eyes...
• It's true, though. If there were no signs, but there were cars and people, it wouldn't seem half so creepy.