Sunday, October 28, 2012

On Painted Pigeons- Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

One of my favourite types of marketing and art revolves around taking ordinary things and making them extraordinary.
People tend to overlook the mundane things they see every day, things that have become familiar and don't need to be recognized as new stimuli anymore. According to Claudia Hammond, author of Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception,"we use the number of new memories we form to gauge how much time has passed". That means that the more routines and familiarity in our lives, the more likely we are to coast through and the faster time seems to go by. I know that the first time I drove a familiar route and couldn't remember the drive at all ("How the hell did I drive here?!"), it scared the crap out of me. Our minds are lazy; they don't want to register everything in our world. No matter that everything that surrounds us, from potholes to lamp posts, has a design and some type of beauty to it.
SO. I love shocking people out of their familiarity. Reminding us that we're alive and the world is dynamic.

And so, I give you:

Venice's Painted Pigeons!

loststateminor.com
Ok. Pigeons are gross. They're "rats with wings" and they poop on everything. But what if they had beautiful plumage, like the  birds we admire and photograph? We might not love them, but we'd certainly not be able to re-classify them in the "mundane" category.
I'm sure artists Julian Charrière and Julius von Bismarck (I'm seriously jealous of this name) had similar trains of thought when they, in conjunction with Venice's Architecture Biennale Exhibition, airbrushed pigeons in tropical colours and let them loose in Venice. Without delay, there were outcries about the lack of "respect for defenceless animals" and whatnot. But really, the airbrushing was harmless for the birds, and people get away with this garbage all the time.


Latitudenews.com
Ffffound.com

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