I decided to walk the 3.5 miles from my hotel in midtown Manhattan down to NYU in Washington Sq where this year’s CMJ Music Conference was taking place. A small nod to environmental thinking, [one less cab ride], and another nod to the beauty of the city in fall. NYC seems cleaner when the wind whips through the sky-scraping canyons, it’s pulse is quicker than in summer when the traffic fumes alone are as overpowering as the muggy heat. A long walk also gave me time to reflect on some ideas I had for my panel with DJ Spooky.
I pulled out my camera hoping to grab an image our two to spruce up the Moose site and realized quickly that NYC’s street art has become increasingly prevalent, Banksy-style, on every city block. Street art makes a mockery of the ideas surrounding online social media – it is way more inventive and persuasive offline than on; every image, collage, poster and graffiti on the walls of NYC is, by its very short-lived existence [it will soon be replaced by new messaging,] more authentic than any corporate message pushed at us from all angles. Take a look, you decide.
What follows here is a mix of pure urban counter-culture imagery and retail/corporate messaging that thinks it is urban, daring, street, edgy etc – some ad guys idea of those adjectives….I am very clear about which of these images “speak to me.”
Hey Dave, thought you might enjoy this….
overage of your panel on UWire’s CMJ Blog:
http://www.cmj08blog.com/2008/10/24/indies_dying_breath/
October 29th, 2008 at 3:40 pm