Welcome to an actual meaningful wiki.
yea thats right.not some pointless wiki dedicated to bananas or something.
this is for members of elftown who are sick of inmature children who have nothing to meaningful to say.this is here for members to discuss their philisophies on art,society,human behavior,etc.
hopefully the people im searching for(intellectual artistic members)will find this wiki.so if you do find it then spread the word.WARNING:THIS WIKI IS FOR EXTREMELY OPEN-MINDED PEOPLE,AND I WILL NOT TOLERATE DISCRIMINATION OR OTHER THINGS THAT ANNOY ME.SOME PEOPLES VIEWS MIGHT AT FIRST OFFEND YOU BUT OPEN YOUR MIND AND THINK ABOUT IT BEFORE YOU REPORT SOMETHING TO ME OR THE GUARDS.im looking for creative people.

if you want to join message me.
members:
1.[Ilivethelushlife]no autographs today.
2.[Sleeping Dictionary] Society is a b*tch. I wish i could live in a godamn tree house in the middle of the rain forest where no one can bug me.
3.[Little Red Riding Hoodrat]
4.[Froya]
5.[The Sylvan Sorcerer]
6.[ill be your number 1 with a bullet]
7.[I'll Make You Tremble]
8.[MacaroNI ANd ChLORIne]
9.[hi_me13]
10.[rinaweeena]
11.[confused daisy]
12.[Blue Raspberries and Grape Juice]
High Art
By Rebecca Fox
Walking through New York City, heads bow when trekking up subway stairs, loud conversations get tuned out, and it’s easy to miss an encouraging sign.

This self-made distance from our surroundings is partly why Stanford Kay’s installation, “Life Signs,” makes a strange sort of sense in Union Square Park. Consisting of six neon green, diamond-shaped placards of steel, the installation sends up traffic sign directives by suggesting intimate actions instead. The silhouettes on Kay’s signs instruct bystanders more through gesture than action. In one, an adult stoops to adjust a child’s shoelace. In another, two apparent businessmen engage in what appears to be relaxed conversation; one is raising an arm in casual gesticulation while the other listens, hands in his pockets.

According to the New York City Parks Department, hundreds of temporary artworks have been exhibited in City parks since 1967. Their placement has depended largely upon the “safety and durability of the artwork” in addition to its “suitability to the site.”

So why Life Signs in Union Square? “Initially, I wanted to put [Life Signs] on the streets, but the Department of Transportation didn’t like that idea. So I went to the Parks Department and they diddles,” Kay says. Upon installing the work in Union Square, which, to Kay, is “very connected to the street,” the artist realized Life Signs could function well there.

For Henry Choi, Director of Public Affairs at the Union Square Building and Development District, Life Signs works in Union Square for the opposite reason. He likens the park to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, citing both as places where visitors can experience a “very distinct change of atmosphere in an instant.” Choi says, “You’re almost washed of the urban life that you had half a block before, and so when you’re in there, you quickly ascertain a different geographic perspective of where you are.”

As Choi sees it, being stripped of one’s urban identifiers is crucial to the onlooker’s absorption of Life Signs. “When you’re in that kind of oasis, it’s both funny and informative that a sign that’s made in the image of a traffic sign. You’re allowed to play with symbology or signage or semiotics and you understand it as maybe a goof or maybe a takeoff on your regular life,” he says. He believes in urban oases like St. Patrick’s or Union Square Park, “you can become a little more introspective about your own life,” an inward look fostered by “Life Signs.”

Not all introspection leads to clarity, and a lack of comprehension on the part of the viewer is something Kay has taken in stride upon mounting “Life Signs” in Union Square. “Less than half, but a good proportion of people wanted to know what the piece was about, what it was connected to- was there an event? They wanted an explanation,” says Kay. The rest were content to assign their own meaning to the work, which was Kay’s intent. “That was kind of interesting, to see who wants to take a leap of imagination and who wants to be told what they’re looking at,” he says.

Kay’s willingness to keep “Life Signs” open to viewers’ interpretation might have stemmed from his perception of the typical Union Square viewer. “I got the feeling there are a lot of design and photography kind of businesses around there,” Kay says, “so I felt it was kind of sophisticated on one hand, and a young crowd on one hand.”

Sophistication doesn’t really concern Choi so much as whether there is a crowd to absorb “Life Signs.” For him, the presence of public art is vital to enhancing the character of the Union Square neighborhood. “It doesn’t matter if you like it, dislike it- it’s art for the sake of creating ideas in the viewers’ minds,” says Choi. “That occurs, and I think that there’s a communications aspect. You see the artwork, you’re immediately taken somewhere else- you like it, you dislike it, you hate it, you love it. And then your next step is to actually tell someone else. Once you start doing that, you start increasing the interaction of urban living,” says Choi.

Upping the level of interaction is always a boon to neighborhood developers, but it assumes the mantle of hallowed tradition in the Union Square neighborhood. Part of the district’s lore and lure is its reputation for being a point of origin for political and civic expression. As Choi puts it, “If you live in the city, you understand that if there is some sort of voicing of people’s concerns, there’s a very good chance that an organizational point will be in Union Square.”

Layering public art upon Union Square’s historical and contemporary identity yields not only a more tempting neighborhood, from a business perspective, but perpetuates the sense that the park is part of a larger cultural institution. “That sort of public engagement that these previous epochs have infused the park with, I think that art or cultural installations are just a natural extension of,” says Choi.

Watching people conduct the banal activities of their daily lives, below “Life Signs’” depictions of similarly mundane activities, Union Square park still illustrates how connectedness can elevate the ordinary to inspirational. In that sense, Kay succeeded in his goal of getting “regular laypeople exposed to it, in their own environment.” Given the history of public expression that characterizes the Union Square environment, Kay’s greatest coup might have with the park users for whom “Life Signs” eventually receded from view, immersed as they were with their own worlds, causes, and unremarkable efforts at living.

-Rebecca Fox