by Liza Jansen
NEW YORK, July 30 (Xinhua) -- Why don't just turn all billboards in the world into art, Justus Bruns wandered around dreaming for the last two years. He, however, realized it would be impossible, or only likely to occur if he would ever become a world famous business magnate. As an entry level, having all Times Square billboards displaying art works instead would be more realistic.
Bruns -- a 22-year-old industrial design student from the Netherlands who himself never set foot on the world's most famous square -- therefore decided on an ordinary day in December last year to "just do it" and develop his idea.
He built a website in one night, launched it the next day, and that morning immediately received a phone call from the NY Post. He also acquired Times Squares art manager's phone number, who advised him to "keep on building momentum." In a singular day Times Square to Art Squares, as he baptized the project, internet page received 6,000 page views.
Times Square is the crossroads of the world, at least to the million plus people who pass through the square every day and to the hundreds of millions of people who see it daily on television broadcast coverage from the area.
SIMPLE IDEA
In less than a week, he rallied together a group of eight like- minded enthusiasts from all different backgrounds, ranging from a financial whiz kid, an internet expert, and art critic, to a jurist and a journalist.
The idea is simple: on www.ts2as.com artists upload their work. The website does not have a door policy, it serves as an open digital exhibition platform. An international jury of established connoisseurs in the art world selects the art. Through donations by corporate sponsors or individuals financial means will be collected to buy display time on Times Squares billboards.
"Art inspires you to do stuff, it makes you reflect on the daily society," Bruns told Xinhua in a recent interview, while sipping from his iced water on a burdensome heated afternoon in Bryant Park, central New York. "Advertisement does not create that feeling, it only inspires you to consume."
Companies can show their reflection on today's society, rather than being solely interested in sales, is his ideology. "Don't people condemn large companies as well for not spending enough on charity?" he asked.
No billboard on Times Square however has been replaced by art yet, nor is there a perspective to it happen in the near future. But Bruns and his 23-year-old Times Square To Art Square companion Alexander Bakkes, responsible for PR and event management, arrived in New York 10 days ago to pave the way for their heroic project.
Through appointments with city officials and representatives of large companies they actively and devotedly spread their message, which is embraced by everyone it comes to ears.
For example, Glenn Weiss, Times Squares public art manager, welcomed the project and encourages the represented duo to prove their ability to social network and build relationships with billboard operators. Although money is one of the many obstacles in the run-up to the realization of the project, "the impossible is a classic American ambition in the center of American ambition, " Weiss told Xinhua.
The Times Square Alliance Public Art Program, Creative Time, Babelgum and Performa are only a few of the art organizations that have arranged artworks on the LED screens in Times Square over the last 12 months. No one, however, has attempted more than three billboards at once.
Bruns and Bakkes individually finance their trip to New York. Bruns earned his ticket by painting 11 artworks in a week's time, which he sold online. He collected 700 U.S. Dollars. The remaining 300 U.S. Dollars of the tickets cost he paid with savings.
The pair highly believes and relies on the power of crowdsourcing -- the practice of outsourcing work to an unspecified group of people typically by making an appeal to the general public on the internet, firstly introduced by Jeff Howe in the article in Wired Magazine "The Rise of crowdsourcing" -- to spread their message.
"This would not have been able to happen 30 years ago when we were dependent on phone trees -- a telephone campaign to offer reminders, poll the respondents and ask them to contact others by phone -- now we have social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter," said Bakkes. "It's about mobilizing a generation."
The Times Square to Art Square crew does not possess an office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where the majority of the team resides, nor any money, yet. Bruns works from his student dorm in Delft -- a little old student city about 68 kilometers from Amsterdam.
He just finished his undergraduate degree in Industrial Design and has his own graphic designers company, that covers his costs of living. Every spare minute of his free time he devotes to Times Square to Art Square.
POSITIVE RESPONSE
Currently, 296 artists have uploaded art on www.ts2as.com, the majority of them being Dutch, accompanied with some artists from South Africa. Artists from South America and other countries in Africa are on their way.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg advocates turning Times Square into an agreeable public space, allowing projects such as The Times Square Ticket Booth and the red glass steps -- a technologically advanced amphitheater on Times Square built entirely from glass, which can seat up to 500 people -- to realize.
As well Duffy Square was redesigned, making it a pedestrian- friendly gathering place for the millions of tourists and New Yorkers visiting Times Square every year.
The Times Square Alliance -- which works to improve and creatively cultivate Times Square -- recently started working with a variety of arts-based curatorial groups to bring public art projects to Times Square.
Amongst their last projects were the "street pianos" in late June, when 60 pianos were installed in parks and public spaces available to all pedestrians. Not to mention "Key to the City," a citywide public art project released in early June on Times Square, allowing every New Yorker and visitor to open spaces in all five boroughs with one key.
The Times Square to Art Square project perfectly suits the ambition of the Times Square Alliance to welcome more artists to this epicenter for advertisement.
"People stamp us as a generation that can only twitter, we want to prove the opposite," said Bruns, and then picks up his flickering phone to answer a call from a representative of a major New York museum.
