Smiles per hour

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Smiles per hour zone, Port Phillip, Australia

This story is a bit old, but it was picked up by FishArePeopleToo and on a Sunday morning it has to, well, bring a smile to your face. Fine type at the bottom of the sign reads:

“The Sustainable Community Progress Indicators Project has been measuring in your area. For more information or to become a smile spy call 9209 6777 or go to www.portphillip.vic.gov.au “Smiles Per Hour.”

The link suggests the genesis of the project:

“Are we a friendly folk here in Port Phillip? Do we smile or say ‘Hi’ to our neighbours and strangers as we walk down the street? Do we even make eye contact, or do we hurry down our street hoping no one will talk to us? In 2005, a survey of residents across our 7 neighbourhoods found that many people yearned for a friendlier neighbourhood, but didn’t know where to start. Some admitted that they also avoided eye contact and a smile with others in their streets.”–via

I’m not sure about the “spy” language or the efficacy of posting such signs compared to supporting smile-eliciting public art, such as Marcus Young and Grace MN’s Don’t You Feel It Too?, pictured here at the AbsoluteZER0 street festival during the 01SJ Biennial in San Jose or the latest and greatest Improv Everywhere flash mob The MP3 Experiment Seven.

Marcus Young, Don't You Feel It Too?, 01SJ Biennial. Photo Jaime Austin

Maybe, however, they’re right that “keeping up with the Jones’s” will spur “friendly competition,” similar to what Xcel energy appears to be banking on with its “report card” system of billing.

Jan 13, 2010 (Star Tribune – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) —

Xcel Energy Inc. is sending some of its customers report cards — complete with smiley faces — that lets them know how their energy use compares with their neighbors’.

This latest way to keep up with the Joneses is part of a new three-year pilot program aimed at encouraging homeowners to cut down on their energy consumption. It is targeting about 35,000 gas and electric customers, primarily in St. Paul and its suburbs.

The idea of experimenting with social pressure as a way to conserve energy is growing across the country. Utilities in several states, including California and Washington, are running similar programs. And several smaller utilities in Minnesota are already seeing results as they work to meet state mandates to cut energy use.–via Trading Markets.com

Mind the … gap

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via Occasional Links & Commentary

via Occasional Links & Commentary

Speakers’ Corners

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Carlos J. Gómez de Llarena, The Urban Speaker at the 2010 Conflux Festival. via Alias Arts

There are many “updates” to the traditional Speaker’s Corner, including Monica Sheets’ Free Speech Machine and Daniel Jolliffe’s One Free Minute. What I particularly like about Carlos J. Gómez de Llarena’s The Urban Speaker is the way it uses signage and the semiotics of construction sites to both call attention to the piece and to camoflauge it in the urban environment.

Sign of desires

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“[F]or the next month our billboard will be used to list some of the big and small needs we have at the waffle shop. If you bring in one of the things we need, we will create a special display with your name next to the thing you bring in, and add a new item to the billboard list as we always seems to be in the need of something.”

“The Waffle Shop is a neighborhood restaurant that produces and broadcasts a live-streaming talk show with its customers, operates a changeable storytelling billboard on its roof, and runs a take-out window that sells food from countries engaged in conflict with the U.S. The shop is a public lab that brings together people from all walks of life to engage in dialogue, experimentation and the co-production of culture.”–The Waffle Shop

Jon Rubin, who initiated The Waffle Shop as part of his Storefront Project course at CMU,  is also the creator of one of my favorite sign projects, The Sky’s the Limit.

Signs of the times

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Anthony Discenza, Street Signs Project. via Open Space

Anthony Discenza, Street Signs Project. via Open Space

I love signs. My growing personal collection is here. There is a real joy in finding a sign like the tagged “Respect Signs and Signals” (Boston),  but many artists have mastered such interventions as a kind of physical meme. So I particularly enjoyed Joseph del Pesco’s interview on the excellent SFMOMA Open Space blog with Anthony Discenza about his Street Signs Project, “Coming Up: Greater Horrors.”

Other favorites include, of course, the amazing Rigo 23

Rigo 23, Innercity Home, San Francisco

Rigo 23, Innercity Home, San Francisco

Germaine Koh’s Journal on mobile signs.

Germaine Koh, Journal

Germaine Koh, Journal

Steve Lambert’s equally funny mobile arrow sign.

Steve Lambert

Steve Lambert

Finally, straight from the horse’s mouth

Robert Fleege, What makes outdoor so powerful

Robert Fleege, What makes outdoor so powerful

Which is proved by the ban on public billboards in Sao Paulo.

Sao Paulo, no billboards

Sao Paulo, no billboards

btw, Discenza is selling limited edition prints of his signs for a new project. Help support his habit.

Location. Location. Location.

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“Just after the opening of my solo show at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles we loaded up a rented pick-up truck with the arrow sign I included in the show. When I came across various locations in the city, we untied the sign, carried it over and snapped some shots – each time improvising a message for the face.”

via Steve Lambert