Michael Dory is expanding the definition of graffiti, with his non-visual sonic street art (presented last month at Conflux). His inconspicuous concrete crickets (pictured) recently got some NPR and Boing Boing love, and his own site explains:
Graffiti is one of the most powerful and most personal displays in the urban experience, and can be used to make statements, tag territory, spread messages — urban markup language in practice. However, the output is nearly always visual in nature, making this experience one-dimensional. Furthermore, rarely does the work have a brain of its own, and is usually incapable of reacting to anybody observing it.
Concrete Crickets was created to address this deficit, creating small devices that will be aware of passers-by as well as other units of their kind. Each unit consists of a sound generator, amp, speaker and sensory system, and is housed in camouflage appropriate to the streets of the city — soda cans, cigarette packs, and the like.
So there you have it...batteries, hacked mp3 players, wires, speakers and garbage create a little bit of magic on the streets (and almost reminds us of a less-intelligent Number 5). There are more photos of the crickets around the city here, we wonder how many of these will be reported as "suspicious" to the NYPD.
Check out a video here...have you heard anything chirping lately? This has us thinking that maybe the maple syrup smell was just olfactory graffiti!
Photos via doryexmachina's flickr.
