A view of the Occupy Wall Street bat signal projected onto the Verizon buillding last night (photo by Nick Pinto via blogs.villagevoice.com)
Yesterday’s N17 Day of Action for the second month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street took the city by storm with demonstrators by the thousands crowding Union Square, Foley Square and flooding the Brooklyn Bridge. In probably one of the most awe-inspiring things to come out of this movement yet, OWS projected a “bat signal” onto the Verizon building located near the Brooklyn Bridge, sending their message out to the entire city. The projection flashed the following statements in quick succession:
99% / MIC CHECK! / LOOK AROUND / YOU ARE A PART / OF A GLOBAL UPRISING / WE ARE A CRY / FROM THE HEART / OF THE WORLD / WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE / ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE / HAPPY BIRTHDAY / #OCCUPY MOVEMENT / OCCUPY WALL STREET / list of cities, states and countries / OCCUPY EARTH / WE ARE WINNING / IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING / DO NOT BE AFRAID / LOVE
Yesterday on our tumblog Hyperallergic LABS we asked who was behind the project and got a response from artist Akiko Ichikawa on Twitter leading us to Boing Boing‘s interview with the mastermind of the bat signal, Mark Read.
Read tells the amazing story of how he pulled it off, working with a tenant across the street from the Verizon building who opened up her apartment to Read and his team. This is DIY at its best. From the interview:
Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled. There’s a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn’t say much more. I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully there. But then I got one call from a sane person Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.
I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her.
I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.
Her parting words were, “let’s do this.”
Read wrote the slogans for the projection, while Max Nova and JR Skola, from the art group Dawn of Man did the graphics. The projection started as protesters made their way across the Brooklyn Bridge. Ryan Devereaux reported at The Guardian the crowd’s reaction as the slogans lit up the building’s facade:
“With a chorus of honking cars in the background, the crowd erupts in cheers and reads the display in unison as they pass.”
Check out the live projection in the video below:
The Twitterverse was also alive with some great reactions:
