New Aesthetic eruption

A New Aesthetic eruption I caught yesterday off Brick Lane in east London: this LCD adverscreen displaying rotating, chiding public safety messages beneath a CCTV camera, nestled among the graffiti-daubed old buildings above the cobbled and thronged street.

CCTV and LCD adverscreen with anti-booze PSA, a New Aesthetic Eruption, Brick Lane, Hackney, London, UK.jpg

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: booze • cctv • Funny • london • new aesthetic • sign • surveillance • uk • Weird

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Brainspore

A surveillance camera combined with a television screen that constantly broadcasts government messages? Brilliant!
http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman

I will laugh when someone hacks it to show GOATSE.
- Martijn Vos
  
  It certainly deserves to be hacked. But I’d rather show something else. How about messages about essential freedom during the Olypmics or something?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

How soon until that screen gets smashed with a bottle of beer?
- rocobo9
  
  impossible. there’s a surveillance camera. they’ve thought of everything!
blkhawk

Added some Dr. Breen to it. That actually makes it seem less dystopian.
- chupsahey
  
  I love his show!
- Mantissa128
  
  Welcome to City 17. It’s safer here.
RJ

So somebody is going to get a couple of free LCD monitors soon. That’s nice.
- BombBlastLightingWaltz
  
  So it goes…
spacemunky

All hail Oceania!
awjt

“This is a desiccated public space… PUBLIC DRINKING BOROUGH” *hic*
BombBlastLightingWaltz

Oy! Who’s for public drinking. As dat signs says, Cheers mates.

Googling BRCX LANE E gave thus :

Brick Lane is a street in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London. It runs from Swanfield Street in the northern part of Bethnal Green, crosses Bethnal Green Road, passes through Spitalfields and is linked to Whitechapel High Street to the south by the short stretch of Osborn Street. Today, it is the heart of the city’s Bangladeshi-Sylheti community and is known to some as Banglatown. It is famous for its many curry houses.

Many Curry houses and public drinking? Not a likely combination lest thy unleash thee spaghetti monster pubbles.
http://twitter.com/JayStephens Jay Stephens

I lived on Hanbury Street, about 60 yards from the Shampan, for years… Me & GF bought a little apartment there in ’99… was a Borough of Gibsonesque Bigendity then, and is doubtless even more so now. What this particular installation actually reminds me of is those old post dadaist crews who used to sneak into workplaces and replace the dispiriting internal signage with signage that was even more dispiriting (e.g. “each employee one slice only please ” >> “each employee one slice only, management 2 slices each”.
Ian Anthony

inb4 “Atheism is just another religion.”
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Andy-Murdock/783770273 Andy Murdock
  
  Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position.
- http://shadowfirebird.tumblr.com shadowfirebird
  
  Are you telling me that this assortment of street furniture DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GOD(s)?! Oh, the human ET!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Justin-Forposting/100002531076048 Justin Forposting

It’s to help them get a nice clear view of your face. When they finally learn that PSAs won’t get people to look, they will start to use tiny random flashes of porn to keep people staring at the screen.
- Robert
  
  That’s brilliant! You win the thread!
  
  There was that study a while back that said a picture of staring eyes made you more honest. Maybe they should just do that, except the eyes would move.
Craig Cook

It seems Mr. (Eric) Blair a.k.a. George Orwell was just 28 years too early in his predictions. Freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength #newspeech. This is *right* out of 1984.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6LOJDBXCDHL5MVQQRLOCCJ35AY alexb

Brick Lane is literally a den of thieves though. You can go for a curry on a Friday night and have your bike stolen within minutes of locking it up and then go to the market the next day and have some scary oik try to sell it back to you.
- Guest
  
  Have you read the history of your Empire? That behavior is not limitied to Brick Lane.
FelixDio

“Oik”? Did I just hear that right? Damn Oxbridge types.

Brick Lane has always, historically, been a thieves hangout. So I’m really rather glad it’s not been gentrified.

But more importantly, I think I need to start my own line of beers and liquors, all under the brand name of “Responsibly” — ad budget, who needs a stinkin’ ad budget?
fight4paece

That reminds me of the display screens in the elevators of Mirrors Edge. How scary is it that the very thing they use to create an atmosphere of government oppression is here in our reality. Also, imagine how much money is being spent for this oppressive system. They are moving in this direction in USA as well and I never hear any of the repuglycons complain about that spending. It seems government spending is only a problem for them when it is not spent on programs that shuffle all of the money into there corprorate cronies pockets for BS like this or spy stations at your ISP. Is it time for a real life cyberpunk like culture to combat this crap? And, where do I sign up!?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_W2ZUNIJUMICQELWQ257Y5CC27I Tino

Somebody needs to spray a V on that.
- strangefriend
  
  Seeing the camera reminds me of the scene late in the comic V For Vendetta were the little girl sees the now-shut off CCTV camera & starts joyfully shouting ‘Bollocks’ to this & that.