Interactive Tube Posters

With all of the posters around on the London Underground, you can often get a sense of being watched. So it's no surprise that a few people have taken pictures of themselves interacting with the posters.

I love this playful one by Petra Gent


She said that her friend wanted to make it look like the Iranian gentleman was passing her a cup of tea.

Chutney Bannister's is less playful but it makes for a striking photo, with Jack Bauer busting from the poster.


Speaking of subway ads, those pesky pranksters in New York, Improv Everywhere, managed to convince a number of people that they were attending a private art exhibition at station. They put up 30 placards next to objects naturally found on 23rd Street subway platform in Manhattan - pipes, electrical boxes, signs, advertisements - and transformed them into works of art.

They realised that there was a lot of art installations at some stations and said "Despite these wonderful authorized and unauthorized works, the majority of the stations are pretty boring and display nothing but ads. Well, at least at first glance. We were able to turn the components of the 23rd Street C/E station into works of art simply by adding placards containing art-speak descriptions."

I love the "arty" caption on this poster, as it's like the posters at King's Cross Tube that I blogged about last week.


"Top Chef, Bottom Mystery (2008)
MTA in Collaboration with Bravo Network

The interleaving of advertisements present in the partial removal of outer ads has been a recent trend in modification from platform users. This reveals the mystery of previous advertisements hidden just under the current. The artist implies that the viewer should consider the past placements in this location, stretching back to the inception of the MTA's selling of ad space in their subways, and the layering of meaning which can occur in such a small space."

Seems like people are capable of making underground ads artistic, without the advertisers intending it!