The Bubble Project - Make Em Say What You Want

Posted August 20th, 2007 by SethPlattner

As if celebrities don't say some really stupid things already, now The Bubble Project --the brainchild of artist and activist Ji Lee --gives you the opportunity to make the famous say what you've always wanted to hear them say on his website. Lee's scope isn't limited to just the net, though. If you are a New Yorker, you've likely seen his bubbles popping up all over. If you haven't, then express yourself and put up your own.

If you aren't creative enough to come up with your own caption for pictures like the one above, it's still fun to browse Lee's website and see what everyone has said. Of course not everyone is as funny as they think they are, but you occasionally come upon one that makes you laugh out-loud in the office and then feel awkward about it. But the real genius in this website isn't the ability to feed words to celebrities, but in the actual expressed purpose of Lee's project. He says it pretty well himself in his manifesto:

"Our communal spaces are being overrun with ads. Train stations, streets, squares, busses, and subways now scream one message after another at us. Once considered "public," these spaces are increasingly being seized by corporations to propagate their messages solely in the interest of profit. Armed with heavy budgets, their marketing tactics are becoming more and more aggressive and manipulative. We the public, are both target and victim of this media attack.

The Bubble Project is the counterattack.
The Bubbles are the ammunition.
Once placed on ads, these stickers transform the corporate monologue into an open dialogue. They encourage anyone to fill them in with any form of self expression, free from censorship.

More Bubbles mean more freed spaces, more sharing of personal thoughts, more reactions to current events, and more importantly, more imagination and fun."

OK, a little strong, a little wordy, but you get the idea. He offers visitors to his website the ability to print our their own bubbles and put them anywhere they want. Is this defacement of public property? Yeah, maybe. But if you go through the Street Bubbles and see what people have written you'll some pretty great quotes. And if you aren't down for disrupting the public, they are equally fun to print out and put around the office.

Seth Plattner
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