4/19/2004: Public artwork changes via text message

Welcome to Middlesbrough, where they have just installed this public artwork. No, it's an artwork.

It turns out the whole point of this art is that it changes color if you send it a text message from your wireless phone. The commands it will recognize are: blue; starvibe; xxx; pearl; boro and chromapop.

"boro", it turns out, changes the color to the local sports team's colors, red and white.



If the full story is to be believed, this is a new centerpiece to the entire town and is much more beautiful than these stupid pictures let on.

full story

From the headline, I was expecting it to actually display the text messages somehow, instead of just change colors... which I think would lead to a much more interesting display of the community.

Why do you tell me you were expecting it to actually display the text messages somehow instead of just change colors which you think would lead to a much more interesting display of the community just now?

Eliza? Is that you?

Hmph. Now, not even artwork is safe from spam.

I wonder how many pedestrians will get run over by drivers trying to text message the sign?

It's amazing what the English will do to brighten up their boring, dreary, grey, cities ..

Where else would you find a phallic, glowing, public structure in the centre of town, displaying it's glitzyness for all to see .. and changing its composition, mood, glow, et al .. after intimate interaction with any passing male, who has a phone ..

Well? .. you gotta admit, young males would be nearly all the ones doing the texting ..

You get my drift? .. Masturbation on a grand public scale .. ?

How many English cities do you know Onetrack? I think it's a touch dismissive to describe them as 'boring, grey, dreary'. Parts of some world cities are but we don't have the monoploy, and many of our towns and cities are hugely colourful and lively.

This flash gimmick is just another boy's toy isn't it, as in 'bigger the boys more expensive the toys' and I personally don't think anything could make it appear beautiful or remotely artistic. There is a lovely wind and light sculpture on Waterloo Bridge over the Thames which is composed of a complex sctructure of multi coloured strip lights, which change constantly in response to movement of air/wind. I often used to miss my bus home from work because I had become so absorbed in watching the light show I failed to see the bus. I can't see this new thing having a similar effect.

Plenty, Caz .. Despite the fact I'm an Aussie, my Dad was born and bred right next door to you, in Portsmouth .. and my Mum came from Dunfermline, right next to Edinburgh .. and I've travelled the length and breadth of the U.K., staying for lengthy periods, in places as diverse as Portsmouth, Reading, Aberdeen, Ilkley, York, Edinburgh and Nottingham ..

I guess you just have to experience a dose of good ol' Aussie clear blue skies, and bright sunshine for hours on end .. to realise just how grey and dreary most of the U.K. is .. at least the northern 2/3rds, anyway ..
Not to worry .. half of Europe and all of the Scandinavian countries suffer from the same blight .. we won't hold it against you ..
No small wonder SAD disorder is so prevalent in those places.

I guess the sparkling lights on the phallic art is an attempt to brighten your dreary days .. I'd certainly need something like it if I lived there ..

Is Aberdeen the place referred to as 'The Granite City', think it is, and you can't get much more grey than that and we know the sun doesn't spend much time in Scotland. I can see that an Aussie or someone from a more temperate clime would think of our cities as grey, the weather very often is, but I still don't see where you get the dreary boring idea......

The Victorians built my small town almost entirely of locally mined Limestone, the type that created the natural glory of Cheddar Caves and undergound rivers and of course the Cheddar cheese mines.

In winter and when damp, the stone is deep grey veined with white quartz but in summer it is a gorgeous milky pearly grey, almost white, and the quartz deposites dazzle and delight the eye. We don't need light shows either because every night the sunsets out over the ocean explode every colour like blast funaces of gigantic wild proportion. Sorry for waxing on, but I think it's how people see towns and cities that make them what they are and sometimes it's how we feel about ourselves that adds to the overall effect. Remember what Johnson said about those '...tired of London, are tired of life...'?

But I wouldn't pay tuppence for that thing in Middlesbr'gh! Do you think it's a way of concealing a 'phone aerial inside and in the inner city? There have been some ingenious methods to defeat planning opposition and if this is one it's a bit obvious!

Jaguar, Cheddar is about eight miles from where I live on the lovely Somerset coast and the Dartmoor you refer to is a famous wilderness area of tremendous unspoilt grandeur. And I know Yeovil well, it's in the middle of the wetlands where wild deer and ponies thrive, and you can watch hawks of several kinds swoop on their prey and heron fishing rainbow trout from the streams. My main spare time pastime is walking/rambling and this is lovely countryside and coastline for doing just that, getting off the road and walking, and the weather is irrelevant, and anyway who in their right mind comes to England for the weather?!

Any more of this and you'll think I work for the tourist board but we don't need too many tourists around here!

'..bleak boring ugly miserable godawful and grey..' You must tell me where you saw all that.

And you are right about the cider, it's truly unbeatable!!

The cider is indeed magnificent. I'm racking my brain for the names of a couple of local pubs that had both excellent food and wonderful, truly wonderful cider. Somerset coast is indeed beautiful. When my camera gear arrives I'll have to head over again and spend a while on the moor, some incredibly landscapes and ponies make excellent foreground interest . I'm not denying for a second there are lovely places in England but....

It's wishful thinking Jag!! But seriously now, the sun shines in England, honest it does, and we have serious heat some days. I don't have immediate access to met office records but I remember last summer we had long periods of 26-29C during July and August and I had a melanoma removed which must surely prove something!!

Watch Wimbledon and see the sweltering miasma of pollution and sunshine, and most years we have the tension of 'will the rain stop long enough to finish the tournament'. It has never gone into extra time...yet, and that's in June.

I know how ghastly some of the more modern architecture is, the concrete jungles of the sixties are a blight on many towns and cities. Lots are being torn down and what do we get in their place but more and higher and windier inner cities where people's needs are designed out. It's one of the reasons I left London, that and the sparrows coughing in the trees.

I wish I knew Switzerland but it is years since I went there, and that was a few days hopping back and forth over the Alps from Chamonix Mont Blanc. I think it must have been winter because all my memory can find is snowfields and fondue. It was so magical skiing through brilliant sunshine and the cleanest biting air ever.

Next time you visit, try the Ribble valley in Yorkshire. It's truly outstanding and a gift to a photographer, you can still cross the valley in a Roman aqueduct. You need a boat for that, naturally.
Cheers!

Be thankful for the rain the Gulf Stream brings, as it also brings warmth from the Caribbean, that makes your winters bearable. After all the British Isles are the same latitude as Newfoundland and Labrador.

public artwork

This is Spectra text in my nearest town - the lovely Middlesbrough. Most of the locals regard it as a complete waste of money. It is mainly used by young ladies and gentlemen who can adjust their appearance in the mirrored surface before hitting the pubs and clubs. It won't be long before it is completely covered in graffiti if past experience is anything to go by


Middlesbrough also has some other silly sculptures like a huge bottle set at an angle in the ground which cost a fortune that could be better spent on improving the town in other ways. But get outside the town and you are in some of the best countryside in the UK - the North Yorkshire Moors and Dales. You're dead right though about the weather

Ah but Caz's 29 degrees includes 80% humidity at the same time.

You can titter!! We Angles don't have climate, but we enjoy our eccentric weather which sometimes sends us four seasons in a day, and sometimes all four come at once. We have the Gulf Stream and the joys of temperate and intemperate west winds from the Atlantic (which hit my home full on) up to and including hurricane force. We enjoy Arctic winds from the Nor'East of Siberia and Scandinavia and sand carried in the jetstreams whistling across from North Africa and the Sahara. And for such a tiny nation on a silly island with it's own Scilly Islanders tacked on the toe, we are used to the weather dominating the conversation because it is rare for any two days or two adjoining counties to be the same. I don't hanker after year long summers or rainless days or the weather I have experienced across Africa and America and Oz. Give me warm drizzle and humid summer nights, freezing white March daybreak and teatime in the dark in cold wet Somerset. You guys wouldn't last long here, when you never know what tomorrow or even this afternoon will bring.

Bring on your worst insults! We can take it, on the beaches, in the streets, in the rain hail wind and snow of summer...etc etc

PS. Gosh UT but you were up early, or was it late yesterday...?

I never sleep and am always on the Cellar, 24 hrs a day so that I can keep up with the Euro and Asian users in their different time zones.

This man is a hero and should have a day named for him. How about Undertuesday?

Excellent.

Public artwork etc etc

[quote]Originally posted by CzinZumerzet
[b]You can titter!! We Angles don't have climate, but we enjoy our eccentric weather which sometimes sends us four seasons in a day, and sometimes all four come at once.

Eccentric weather I live in Edinburgh..last week we had a day that had rain,hailstones,sunshine,wind,thunder shit the only thing missing was a friggin' sandstorm.
I even had to scrape frost from the car window's last saturday morning,Its nearly may and our central heatings still on.

Summer Ha Ha thats why we all bugger off to Spain etc in July and Aug..

Re: Public artwork etc etc

Quote:

Originally posted by be-bop Eccentric weather I live in Edinburgh..last week we had a day that had rain,hailstones,sunshine,wind,thunder shit the only thing missing was a friggin' sandstorm. I even had to scrape frost from the car window's last saturday morning,Its nearly may and our central heatings still on. Summer Ha Ha thats why we all bugger off to Spain etc in July and Aug.. [/b]