Wait! It’s just called “bombing!”
By now, you've probably all heard of the LEDs that shut down Boston last week. Today, Turner Broadcasting and Interference Inc., the companies responsible for the stunt, paid the city two million dollars. Ostensibly to cover the cost of a rush hour panic that gridlocked the city, it may also go down as the best media buy in history. After all, international front-page coverage isn't cheap, and it certainly didn't do anything to hurt Aqua Teen Hunger Force's irreverent image.
What has gotten less coverage is the stunt's tie to a local cell - Eyebeam's "Grafitti Research Lab." Dedicated to the evolved embellishment of the city - GRL are the inventors of the "throwie." Essentially an LED taped to a lithium battery, taped to a magnet - the throwie can be thrown at anything metal, where it will stick, and glow. This simple but brilliant idea evolved into larger sculptures, including a luminous Jesus left on a lightpost.
Interference credits GRL as inspiration for the stunt at the end of this video. GRL was somewhat ambivalent about the compliment - posting the following on their website:
"Just more mindless corporate vandalism from a guerilla marketer who got busted. Interference Inc, welcome to the world of being misunderstood, scapegoated, demonized and wanted by the law. Still wanna be a graffiti artist?"
It's an interesting situation, caught between creativity and corporate interests, that both GRL and Interference find themselves in. It is, however, nothing new. Street culture has always had an uneasy relationship with commodification.
The question is, would this have been as big a story if it were simply an art project that caused the stir? How much of the ire is that Turner's marketing department, by proxy, cost the city a bundle in emergency services and Rolaids? How much is embarrassment that we were fooled by something that in the end was literally cartoonish - like those toy pistols that fire nothing but a flag that says 'bang!' And, this is what makes the Interference stunt ultimately different from what GRL does. Instead of being puzzled, or inspired, we feel fooled. In the end, we are captivated as much by the potential danger as the sheer, comical banality.
