Following Amy’s post about the Abbey Road crosswalk, I did some Googling to see if I could find the source of something I remember reading a while back. I read that you should stand on the edge of the crosswalk nearest the oncoming traffic, to provide yourself with the highest visibility. Now I can’t find where I read that.
But I did find some awesome crosswalk-based street art!
The one above is by a Montrealer, Peter Gibson — you can find a lot more of his work here.
The one below I found on Web Urbanist, and they’ve got loads of other links and other information for you.
If you think using pedestrian crosswalk to make a statement is a good idea, try out the video below, also from Web Urbanist.
I’m a huge fan of these small-scale make-people-think initiatives. More! More!
I do, of course, have one criticism of this initiative. The pedestrians are all of a sudden paying more attention to the street at their feet, than the cars that are driving by them (as shown in the video). When a person’s attention is diverted (add cell phones as another example), it does make drivers and pedestrians less aware of the actions of other people that could turn them into another statistic, and a mess load of street jam.
I would have to question whether these kinds of cross walks, as inventive and interesting as they are, don’t actually makes things more dangerous, not less.
Yeah, I noted that too — and while it’s a valid criticism in the short-term, I wonder if it holds up in the long-term. What I mean is, although the street art project distracted some pedestrians, making the crosswalk slightly more dangerous, could it maybe make them more aware the next 99 times they cross a street? In that case, the good outweighs the bad.
Plus, consider all the publicity that they got in the news media. That multiplier effect more than outweighs the distraction factor, I think. Heck, even we’re talking about it, and it didn’t even happen on our continent!
These are fleeting decisions made in a chaotic, busy environment.
99 times may sound good, but news flash: it takes only ONE time to get schmucked.
And the odds of that are higher if you are going down a street or seeing the street art for the very first time.
Trust me, it’s hard to say this because I’m all for street art – and more art in general! Better that than billboards or advertising!
Pardon the buzzword, but I still maintain that this art does more good by “raising awareness” in the future (and through media coverage) than it does harm through immediate, one-time distraction.
Remember, too, that we’re talking about statistics that are normally measured in the “per 100,000″ column, so both the pros and the cons here are very, very small.
The cool factor, though? Off the mutherfuckin’ charts!!
Headline: “Dead Person Salutes Cool Street Art”