Urban Hacking: Redefining Public Space Through Art

Urban hacking, in the context of art, isn’t about malicious code. Instead, it’s about creative interventions in public spaces. This archive explores projects that use guerrilla tactics, repurposing and reimagining urban environments. From temporary installations to permanent murals, artists are pushing boundaries and sparking conversations about the city’s potential. Dive into projects that transform forgotten corners, challenge authority, and beautify neglected areas. We examine the legal, ethical, and aesthetic considerations of these actions, showcasing the power of art as a tool for social change and urban revitalization.

Toronto Street Ad Takeover

With urban artists like Ox, Ludo, Vermibus or Neko being specialized in this kind of critical vandalism and cities like Berlin and Madrid getting ad-busted on a grand scale, street ad takeovers seem to be quite popular these days. Now it’s Toronto’s turn… Mainly targeting billboards and advertisement street signs, the cARTographyTO crew has been responsible for 35 ad-busting hacks all over Toronto. A spokesperson for cARTographyTO stated, These structures are billboards masquerading as sources of useful public information. When you look at the pillars, it’s hard to find the maps, and this goes against the City’s own public space guidelines. How could City Hall allow this to happen? Beyond mere visual pollution, these pillars are a safety hazard. And Astral’s influence on our city is a public insult and embarrassment - more power has been given to those who already have the loudest voices, to the detriment of all who use these spaces. ...

Free Urban Exercise Bike

Florian Rivière is an urban hacktivist. Some would call him a genius, I would describe him as a man with an eye for the small things in urban life. One of his latest small urban projects was the creation of a free urban exercise bike in Paris… Take one of those circulating city bikes, swing out the kickstand and you have your personal urban exercise bike! That’s it, so simple but nevertheless people are still paying for biking sessions in their local fitness studio. An absurdity. ...

2.4 GHz - Public Monitoring Art

Benjamin Gaulon, aka Recyclism, has an interesting hobby: For his 2.4 GHz project, he installs wireless video receiver in public space to hack into wireless CCTV cameras… This device (which is now part of consumers popular products), can be used for wireless surveillance cameras, but it can also be used for parents to monitor their children. Such systems are becoming more popular as they get cheaper. But what most users of those devices don’t realise is that they are broadcasting the signal. (2.4 GHz Project) ...

Urban Hacktivism: The Biggest Football Field in the World

A few days ago, French urban hacktivist Florian Rivière (the guy who installed the fabulous advertising carousel earlier this year) did a Hack your city into a soccer field workshop in Berlin-Kreuzberg! Soccer is one of the basic ways to reclaim the street. But today cities prevent this practice to facilitate car movements and security. Games or sports are just allowed in specific places: soccer fields, golf courses, skateparks, basketball courts… everything is confined. The aim of this workshop is to look for interstitials urban space where we could play soccer wildly. Because play is a claim of freedom and city is a place for freedom. ...

Tetris Hack: Amazing 90 Meters Tetris Game!

The MIT’s Green Building recently hosted the world’s largest Tetris game! The 90 meters tall academic and research building was designed by noted architect I. M. Pei, whose window facade suited perfectly for a 17x9 pixel Tetris screen… Tetris on the MIT Green Building As The Tech pointed out in a corresponding article, the mysteriously appearing Tetris hack, which was described as The holy grail of hacks was the culmination of over four and a half years of work by an undisclosed number of hackers! The group of hackers used the already installed LED arrays to light up the windows with a variety of colors for the super-sized video game, allowing not just students to play a fully functional game of Tetris on the Green Building! ...

Advertising Carousel by Florian Rivière in Berlin

Self-proclaimed urban hacktivist Florian Rivière is in Berlin right now. Inspired by the hackers culture, the Frenchman reinvests and diverts public space to allow citizens to reclaim their environment. His interventions, located between urban design, DIY and upcycling (upgrading waste), have the particularity to be spontaneous and raw, exclusively made with objects found in the street, and always with humor… Games, furnishings, traps, maps, instructions… so many urban tactics to show the functionality of sites, and direct action of the user on urban space. (Florian Rivière) ...

Evan Roth’s Propulsion Paintings

A few days ago, the Welcome To Detroit exhibition by Evan Roth (the guy who invented the Graffiti Markup Language) finished and after presenting several new works, combining popular culture with a certain hacker’s philosophy, what persists is all those great short-films, Roth created documenting his Propulsion Paintings series… Evan Roth has been living and making new work in Detroit for the last month, gearing up for a solo exhibition that opens this Wednesday at Eastern Michigan University: Welcome to Detroit. His new series of artworks is called: Propulsion Paintings. As part of his residency at Eastern Michigan University, he’s teaching a course called Art and Hacking where he had the students create their own Propulsion Paintings as their first project. (todayandtomorrow.net) ...

Paint Attack Sao Paulo

The massive paint attack which took place two years ago at Rosenthaler Platz in Berlin, was one of the most impressing urban art interventions I’ve seen so far in town. Organized and executed by Dutch performance artist Iepe Rubingh and his team, the so-called Painting Reality project recently was the force behind a similar paint attack in Sao Paulo… Painting Reality in Brazil As a part of the Baixo Centro Festival which took place during the last week in Brazil’s biggest metropolis, a group of activists tipped out several buckets of colorful paint on a much used junction and started in that way the great process of an urban live painting, using cars, bikes and pedestrians as brushes, spreading the paint all over the streets! Again it’s just amazing to see how easily you can color your city and have a lot of fun. ...

Urban Pinhole Camera Apartment

For their experimental visual project Stenop.es, Paris-based photographers Romain Alary and Antoine Levi are just using a primitive technique: The Camera Obscura, a pinhole camera… Two layers are merging while the landscapes takes place in the interior’s intimacy. The idea is as simple as it is ingenious. All they have to do to create such an pinhole camera apartment is to entirely darken a room (probably using some kind of transparency) and adding a tiny pinhole to one of the windows. The result is an upside-down projection of the real world taking place everywhere inside, creating that astonishing effect of merging the outside landscape with the indoor space. ...

Stephen Hiam’s Chaos Painting Machine

Today I’d like to introduce a graffiti-inspired artist to you, I recently discovered… Born in London and living in Berlin, Stephen Hiam experiments with spray-paint and chaos and creates in that way crazy abstract artworks. After constructing different drip machines from simple everyday objects, like tin cans, he recently got a Makita BBX7600 (a 4-stroke commercial duty engine) and transformed it into what I would call a semi-automatic paint-vomitter and what he calls an aerosol organsm! ...