The next thought I had was, “Vandalism can be useful”.

I have often had this thought. Sometimes aloud. Especially when I see  tee shirts with ‘ironic slogans’ on them. I’ve mostly had this thought while standing on a train filled to capacity with people who think it sporting to sweat on me at eight in the morning and realising that my only option for relief would be to use my head to break a hole in the wall to generate some ventilation.

Importantly, I do not think this thought in the modern hipster sense that ‘everything is a canvas’ or that ‘city walls can host conversations’. This just perpetuates the illogical idea that everyone is an artist. I mean, how many truly meaningful things are written on walls? The last thing I read on a wall with any semblance of wit was “Lifes to short to sit here to long” (sic).

I approach the subject of vandalism more in terms of urban renovation. While the city walls are not necessarily canvases, I am of the mind that a city is never finished. This is probably a throwback to my ultra suburban upbringing; nearly every house in the area was in the process of renovation or had recently been renovated. Once a piece is completed (a new building, bridge or breakfast nook) it needs to be reviewed and improved upon. A city is the epitome of the perpetual beta.

Now, I’ve never been one to follow Wilson and Kelling’s broken window theory; the idea that if a window is broken and not repaired it will escalate to more broken windows, squatting, drug use, teen pregnancy and other things that Alan Jones rants about. I feel as though the results of their study are too eagerly used to encourage greater scrutiny of individual citizens and therefore normalises technologies of control, such as surveillance. Imagine Gordon Matta-Clark, busy making art by cutting holes in abandoned buildings, only to be followed by a city council worker taking notes about the level of damage done so that it can be repaired.

Imagine, if you would, that the same level of scrutiny and surveillance was applied to the current curses of urban living. City planners could, in essence, observe the areas of dysfunction with regard to transport and reduce the impact on those around them by working at the edges, implementing slight alterations that cumulate to greater social change. Say, helping to reduce congestion in dense urban areas by including bike paths would be a great idea. But, alas, people in elected positions of authority rarely listen to those who elected them.

But the thing about the team from Mexico City that is most interesting is that they used the systems that governments typically use to deliver large scale infrastructure projects. That is, the team took on the planning and physical work promised by their local government, shifting the cost of burden to those who intend to use the lanes (the ultimate user-pay model). They also got through five kilometres in an eight hour day, which means that with the correct funding it would take the team sixty days to complete the desire three hundred kilometres of bike paths (private enterprise is more efficient than government enterprise). Finally, ongoing costs of maintenance would be assumed by the citizens that make the path, meaning that the cost on the government would be virtually nil.

And yet, it is likely that this group will be charged with damage to public property and be called ‘vandals’.

Perhaps it is best if cyclists just make their own bike lanes as required.

Yeah. My first thought was, “How do they ensure that people are wearing 3D glasses when they view the posters?”

Then I saw that the posters aren’t 3D in the annoyingly ubiquitous “It looks just like Avatar!” sense. They are 3D in the “they exist in three dimensions” sense. They are not so much posters as much as they are sculptures.

3D Posters

Each poster was hand made in collaboration with French artist Xavier Barrade, taking thirty-five hours to complete one poster. Due to the large amount of time it takes to create each poster, only a few pieces were created and then each was strategically placed around London. The message then spread, or was pushed, through social networks. To close the loop on this intimate marketing solution, a time lapse video depicting the making of a poster has been used as the video clip for the band’s single “No Rest”.

So this is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it recreates the notion of the band poster. Now whenever I see a sad little photocopied A4 poster in black and white, covered in tape and speckled with mud I wish I saw a majestic paper horse charging toward me.

Secondly, it puts into play the media theory espoused by Harold Innis in his 1950 text ‘Empire and Communication’. Innis postulated that societies must strike a balance between using ‘time-biased’ or ‘space-biased’ media. In this sense, ‘time-biased’ media are durable and persist through time (such as stone and clay sculptures), whereas ‘space-biased’ media are easy to transport to the reaches of an empire (such as paper and papyrus).

The scarcity of posters meant that the medium was inherently ‘time-biased’- an artisanal medium with a consistent message, deciphered by a few with the knowledge acquired offered in pedagogic structures. When social networks were used to share the existence of the posters, a ‘spatial bias’ was enacted- a message translated into the vernacular and repeated en masse in androgogic patterns. The campaign was both exclusive and inclusive. Those in the know were called upon to educate their not-so-hip friends.

Thirdly, it further blurs the lines between advertising and art in a medium that has grown stale; where Banksy is a brand name and every telegraph pole is the site of passive one-way communication.

There is, however, one problem with the band’s media strategy- Dry The River are very mediocre. They cannot escape comparisons to Noah and the Whale or Mumford and Sons for one simple reason- Dry The River are very, very mediocre. I mean, once you’ve got the fish on the hook, you actually have to reel it in.

Ammaright?!