Sincere signwriting

More great stuff from my favourite UK blogger, Brian Micklethwait, albeit while wearing his Samizdata trousers and hat.

Brian says:

That is a sign which I think I would have noticed even if I had not been noticing signs generally at all.

It’s as if its creator was, while creating it, thinking and feeling something rather unusual. He actually cared about people reading his sign and about people doing what he said. He really wanted to communicate something.

He thought about it. How can I word it, he said to himself, to make sure that people pay attention, refrain from swimming in these truly dangerous waters, in which, I know for a fact, in 1995, no fewer than seven – seven – people were drowned?
How can I get that across? Lives are at stake here. Before I die, I want to make the world a slightly better place. This is my chance.

You can see the scene in his office, in 1999 or whenever it was.
“I’m stuck,” said he.

Stuck? Relax, said his less committed colleagues. It’s only a sign. Nobody reads signs. They’re only there to avoid legal liability when some idiot does whatever it is.

“But I really want people to read it! What can I put?”

I like to think that at this point, a wise and experienced sign writer said: “Put your pen down, and tell me what you are trying to say? Say it it out loud.”

“Say it out loud?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what I want to say is that during 1995 there were seven deaths in docklands waters due to people ignoring these signs! These waters are dangerous! No swimming!”

“Well, why don’t you put that?”

“Eh?”

“Put what you just said. That’ll get their attention. Your sincerity will shine through.”

Seriously, there is a real problem with all these signs, not unlike the problem of too many laws. People just switch off. They screen them out. Call it: sign inflation. So many warnings add up to … no warning at all.

The narrative simplicity invokes Douglas Adams for me. Brilliant.
But that last line does make a very good point. Do we really need to be told that there is a danger of drowning in water? Of course there is and of course we don’t – or rather, we shouldn’t. But because someone decides that we do need that reminder along with many, many others, we find ourselves overloaded with information, to the point that we stop listening and we drown.

I would love to know whether the work of our sincere signwriter had any effect on the water-based fatalities in and around the Royal Victoria Dock. Perhaps sincere signwriting is actually the only way of saving lives, but even that would only work in the short-term before we become blasé to the statistics of 1995 and since.

Photo: Brian Micklethwait/Samizdata

Tower view

One here for Mr Brian Micklethwait of BrianMicklethwaitDotCom fame who is a big fan of the Strata Tower – or at least a big fan of taking photographs of it (see here, here, here and more recently here).
But despite his best efforts, not even Brian has got a pic from this angle (AFAIK, anyway):

Bigger here.

Borrowed (without permission, nogal) from these guys (who do plenty of stuff without permission too, it seems) and who have some spectacular examples of long exposure photography of London (and elsewhere) along with some amazing tales of derring do (and in some cases, some of derring don’t).

I must say, I’ve never really though of trespass as a hobby before and I can’t bring myself to agree with it. I can, however, appreciate some of the fantastic photographic results and the images of otherwise secret history that their naughtiness generates.

On a personal note, I was much touched by this pic, from this post, which reminded me of this place, which used to be here.

Notes from Chris

I like Todd Lamb’s Notes from Chris:

Welcome to the “Notes From Chris” gallery. These are notes that I post around New York City from a mysterious man named Chris. Chris wants to do tedious things with people. He also has lots of problems. “Notes From Chris” is a project started by Todd Lamb in 2008.

Here are a few examples:

A bit like the rash of signs that came out across Cape Town a couple of months ago, offering “Horse Meat”, “Umshini Wams”, “Husbands” and “Romantic Dates” amongst other things. That turned out to be an “city-wide installation” for some art festival or other, but it was fun while it lasted.

Knowing that these notes are fake takes the edge off it for me, but they’re still pretty funny and worth a read.

Brian on Art

Regular readers will know of my fondness for Brian Micklethwait’s blog and his narrative, no nonsense style of writing.

Today, Brian gave us a collage of Anthony Gormley’s exhibit(s?) in London during the summer of 2007. But it wasn’t the pictures that piqued my interest so much as Brian’s commentary:

For some damn fool artistic type reason that need not concern us unless we want it to, Gormley called these Men “Event Horizon”.  (Artists who make nice things but talk bollocks about them are a characteristic type of our time, I think.  I don’t blame them.  If they didn’t talk bollocks they’d never get their careers cranked up.  Anyway, it makes a change from a generation ago, when the things they made were almost entirely bollocks also.) The Gormley Men are all based on Gormley himself.

Critic Howard Halle (see here) out-Gormleyed Gormley by saying this:

“Using distance and attendant shifts of scale within the very fabric of the city, [Event Horizon] creates a metaphor for urban life and all the contradictory associations – alienation, ambition, anonymity, fame – it entails.”

Whatever.  In other words, you see in these metal Men whatever you want to see, much as you see whatever you want to see when confronting actual men.

I can’t agree with Brian that what artists produce these days is any better than what artists produced a generation ago. Lest we forget that during this year’s (at least partially) publicly-funded “Infecting The City” arts “festival” in Cape Town:

City “treasures”, including King Edward’s statue on the Grand Parade, were covered in clingwrap and trees on the station forecourt were draped in toilet paper.

Which, to me, almost entirely indicates that things in the art world really haven’t moved on at all in the last 30 years.

Gareth Bale animation

Football players can by hyped out of all proportion, but Gareth Bale from Spurs is having a dream season and he’ll surely have no better game that the one against Inter Milan in the San Siro last October. Sure, Spurs lost 4-3 (although they did win the tie) but a superfast hattrick by Bale almost turned the first leg on its head.

Artist Richard Swarbrick was so impressed by Bale’s contribution to the game that he animated it and put it to music. The result is pretty beautiful, even for non-Spurs fans.

The music is also by Swarbrick and is available for free download here.