Tag: dr. d

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S̶k̶y̶ ̶T̶V̶Sly TV by Dr. D and Disobedient Films

Sky TV Billboard

Dr. D‘s latest project, a collaboration with Disobedient Films, takes his ad busting beyond billboards. Sly TV, a parody of the British satellite TV company Sky (a part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire), is perhaps most visible as a series of wheatpastes in East London.

Sly TV has its own website, and Sly’s ad campaign extends from street art to digital advertising.

It’s amazing what kind of targeting powers digital advertisers have. For as little as $10, you can buy an ad on Facebook and narrow your audience so that it’s only seen by wealthy young British men who go to university and love classic rock. Or just about any other audience you can imagine. Similar thing on Google. Want to reach people thinking about buying a new car? You can buy ads that display when people search “how to buy a car.” What if you want to reach people who are thinking about Sky TV? You can buy ads that display when people search for “Sky TV,” “Sky News,” or “Sky box.” And that’s just what Dr. D and Disobedient Films did.

google

Now, if you search any of the above search terms, there’s a chance that an ad will appear for the Sly TV website. Here’s what that ad looks like:

ad

Sly TV bought similar ads for Facebook. So, if you fit their target audience (English-speaking men who live in the UK), keep an eye out for Sly TV in your newsfeed.

dish

Photos and video courtesy of Disobedient Films

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Weekend link-o-rama

Swoon
Swoon

Enjoy your Saturday. Also, if you enjoy the above photo, make sure you didn’t miss this post from earlier in the week.

  • Dr. D and Leah Leah Borromeo floated some sculptures in a London canal (near where the whole Banksy / Robbo feud went down) to comment on England’s welfare and tax policies.
  • Clet Abraham’s road signs are kinda awesome.
  • Hyperallergic has been doing an amazing job covering street art related stories recently:
    • Urban Maeztro has been putting up some very Mr. Brainwash-y posters in Honduras, but they aren’t so bad when you consider the context.
    • This artist reacted brilliantly to all the recent new about Detroit.
    • Peter Drew, who recently wrote this post for Vandalog, may be expelled from the Masters program he is taking at the Glasgow School of Art. The administration is not happy that he is continuing to do street art while enrolled at the university, which is weird because it sounds like he was admitted at least in part on the basis of his street art… Shouldn’t it be the administration’s job to support Drew now that he is enrolled there, rather than try to stifle his creativity?

Photo by Luna Park

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Street art for the internet

Street art is moving online. If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably noticed that street artists are making art on the street for the purpose of photographing it and sharing the images online (and maybe you remember these posts). I think it is too early to say for sure whether this transition is a good thing, a bad thing or just change, but it has gotten so pervasive that street art that comments on street art now often focuses on pointing out this transition from in-the-flesh street art to art that was intended to be shared digitally. Here are a few recent examples…

1. Reblog This by mobstr (shown above). This piece was painted in Shoreditch, a spot where it would have been seen by countless street art photographers, but it only lasted 7 hours before getting buffed. No matter. Mobstr got a great photo of it and put that photo online. Now it’s all ready to be reblogged on tumblr.

2. What ever happened to street art on the street? by Lush. Both a comment on the proliferation of street art online and the commercialization of the movement. This image is available as a print at Backwoods Gallery. Lush has also made animated gifs of his work, something else that can only be viewed digitally but is created on the street.

3. Fine by Elfo. The text is in Italian and references this work by Giuseppe Chiari. It translates to “Street art is finished, stop all together.” Rather than painting this in a busy city center, Elfo put it on an abandoned building in what looks like the countryside. The audience for the work is (primarily) the audience that will see this photo online and Elfo is well aware of that. Does this mean the death of street art though? Of course not. Chiari continued making art after his declaration, and Elfo has already made more street art. It’s just that Elfo’s public is primarily a digital one, either seeking his work out or coming across it randomly on a site like tumblr, but either way viewing it for free.

For more about this shift towards a digital street and a digital public, here are two posts I wrote a while ago.

Photos by mobstr, Lush and Elfo

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The Cordy House lenticular

Roa. Photo by Magnus D

The shutters at London’s Cordy House are probably best known for Roa‘s hare (see above, or my post last year), which he painted there last year. It’s probably become Roa’s best-known work. What most people outside of London don’t realize is that Roa wasn’t the first artist to make a “lenticular” at Cordy House, and now he isn’t the last either.

As early as January 2009, and I think before that as well, Dr. D had used the Cordy House shutters in a similar way:

Dr. D. Photo by cluttergeoff
Dr. D. Photo by cluttergeoff

And earlier this month, Ludo made something great for the same spot:

Ludo. Photo by Hooked
Ludo. Photo by Hooked

While Roa’s piece on this wall is probably my favorite (so far), it’s worth remembering that he hasn’t been the only one to do something cool on the Cordy House shutters.

Photos by Magnus D, cluttergeoff and Hooked

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New Dr. D film

Most of the time I think Dr. D’s work is very hit or miss, but you’ve got to respect the guy for getting up on all those billboards and whatnot. Here’s a new short film about him that shows some of his work and lets the man himself explain a bit why he does what he does.

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Last Night’s Openings

Last night my friends and I made it to four gallery openings.

Pam Glew Flag

We started at Pam Glew‘s show at Stella Dore. There are a few pieces that are pretty cool and her bleeching technique is interesting, but I think I’ve become a bit jaded by street art. I couldn’t keep from thinking: “portraits from a one-layer stencil” And of course, those seem to be everywhere these days. My friend who doesn’t obsessively follow street art didn’t have that same bias, and really enjoyed everything. Continue reading “Last Night’s Openings”