A group called Vandals Against Violence (Vandaler Mod Vold) has launched a post-it campaign in response to recent violent incidents in Copenhagen.

The post-it notes are placed throughout the city and carry handwritten statements and reminders such as "only the weak resort to violence".

Probably not a campaign with much impact but at least a creative alternative to CCTVs etc, which seems to be the only antidote that politicians come up with nowadays.

More here (in Danish)

• Video on YouTube

Cascoland is a Dutch organization promoting interdisciplinary art that inspire communities to shape their own public spaces through dialogue and participation.

Like the previous two years, Cascoland again this year mobilized a group of Dutch artists and designers and travelled to South Africa to work on community related projects - probably a dream spot for the Dutch who have limited space to play with themselves.

This time the trip went to Durban and documentation is now available online. While some projects appear a bit too much like plop-art for my taste, there are also some quite refreshing ones.

Among my favorites are Jair Straschnow & Gitte Nygaard's "Yellow L" which is a table-like object that can be used as a blackboard for personal communication. The duo also came up with a series of simple sitting hammocks/swings to make a dull park area a little more human-centered.

Another collaborate project experimenting with traditional objects is Pimp my Bin by Jan Korbes & Mantas Lesauskas, who transformed garbage bins into playful vehicles.

Check the Cascoland website for updates and more projects.

Related: Bench in a fence

• Cascoland

Yet another entry dedicated to Helmut Smits and conceptual color installations.

Parking For White Cars Only is a temporary project by Helmut, which took place in a parking garage in 2006. The best parking-spots were accessible for white cars only.

Remotely-related: Natalie Jeremijenko's concept Park-Information in which cars are arranged according to color with the purpose of transforming the mundane act of car-parking into a large public spectacle.

• Parking For White Cars Only

Conflux Festival #2

During the Conflux Festival, the artist Steve Lambert (the maker of AddArt) will carry out a mysterious project.

Steve plans to use the simplest of tools to shut down (albeit briefly) over 85 Manhattan outlets of an undisclosed multi-national corporation without breaking any laws.

The Top Secret Steve Lambert Project is open for participation, so if you're in New York City on September 15th you can be a part of the project/performance/hack/event (which, according to Steve, is likely to get on the news and make people smile!).

For more information visit the project site.

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Update: What was temporarily called the Top Secret Steve Lambert Project is no longer top secret. The project can now be known for it’s real name, Ronald’s Crisis.
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• Top Secret Steve Lambert Project

Hema is a popular Dutch department store chain selling low pricing housewares and other items made by Hema itself.

According to the media foundation Mediamatic in Amsterdam, Hema is the most public manifestation of Dutch culture. Some countries find their identity in churches, the Dutch identify with Hema; a living monument of practical colorful clearness with value for the money.

And so, in relation to a project on Arabic-Dutch art, design and culture, Mediamatic launched the competition 'El Hema' that explore what an Arabic version of the Dutch cultural brand Hema look like. What would the typography look like? What items would they sell? What would be the opening hours?

People are invited to submit their ideas and designs for El Hema products and concepts. The best submissions will be included in an exhibition and the best overall idea will receive an award.

Originally, the real Hema was not too happy with the idea and threatened to take legal action but apparently they changed their minds and are now part of the jury that will select the best design(s). If you can't beat them, join them.

• Mediamatic: El Hema

Here is a brilliant work by Tad Hirsch that I came across when looking through a ppt presentation by Swiss researcher Nicolas Nova.

Tad Hirsch is a researcher in the Smart Cities Group at MIT's Media Lab, where his work focuses on the intersections between art, activism, and technology.

In 2006 he made the site-specific installation Tripwire, which responds to the relationship between San Jose International Airport and downtown San Jose in California

Hirsch custom-built sensors, placed them inside coconuts and hung them from trees at several public locations to monitor noise produced by overflying aircrafts.

Detection of excessive aircraft noise would cause the sensors to trigger automated telephone calls to the airport's complaint line on behalf of the city's residents and wildlife.

• Tripwire

A few years ago, the American artists Tyler Jacobsen and Nathan Martin created the online application Barcode Generator that could be used to adjust the barcode on products in chain-stores (exemplified as Wal-Mart). The idea being that people should only pay what they felt was right, rather than paying the (over)price determined by the stores.

Barcode Generator was available at the website www.re-code.com but it didn't take long before the artists came under attack from Wal-Mart attorneys who forced them to remove it from the site.

Now the London based product designer Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad has come up with a (slightly related) hack called Shiv Card, which can be used to evade the fare on London buses.

Shiv Card is made from a recordable greeting card that mimics the feedback sound of an Oyster Card when waved at the electronic reader, thereby fooling the bus driver into believing that the card is real (Oyster Card = electronic ticket/smart card).

Bahbak is a designer who experiments with the boundaries of product design, but since his website only contains limited information it's hard to tell precisely what the artistic motivation behind the project is. From my point of view, the interesting thing about Shiv Card is not the free rides that you get but the anonymity that it provides. Oyster Cards are embedded with RFID chips, meaning that the users' movements within the public transportation grid is likely to be tracked and stored somewhere.

I don't know exactly how the Oyster system works, but another way - and without cheating anyone - of avoiding being tracked, could perhaps be to meet up with other commuters and agree to swap Oyster Cards thereby jamming the data and preventing it from being (mis)used. At least, that's what people in The Netherlands (including myself) did a few years ago when they found out that supermarket-chain Albert Heijn was spying on their customers by data mining the discount cards that they so generously gave away for free.

• Shiv Card

AddArt is a subversive Firefox add-on currently being developed by the American artist Steve Lambert.

The concept is inspired by the popular Adblock add-on which removes ads from web pages. The main difference between the two is that AddArt will not just block ads, it will replace them with new images - images created by artists. So, the more ads you surf, the more art you'll get!

The idea is to run the AddArt concept somewhat like an art gallery with different curators responsible for organizing the shows.

AddArt is currently in prototype-mode but hopefully it will be functional soon.

• www.addart.eyebeam.org

The Boston-based performance group Institute for Infinitely Small Things has published a book called The New American Dictionary.

The dictionary highlights the terminology of fear, security and war that has permeated American English post 9-11. It includes 68 new terms i.e. Preparedness and Freedom Fries as well as terms that have recently been redefined i.e. Torture.

The dictionary also has an interactive dimension. 58 terms are left undefined for the reader to pencil in their own definition. Furthermore, readers are invited to submit their additions to the institute for a possible inclusion in the 2nd edition.

The New American Dictionary is available at several online stores.

• www.newamericandictionary.com