Ephemeral Road Paint

Ubiquitous markings in our roadways are a fact of life. From road striping, lane delineation, and construction utility locates - the street is often a rainbow of color and line. Ways of expanding this notion in interesting ways to take-back some of this area of cities and make us aware of the patterns underlying or within our urban sphere include projects such as the Blue Road or these lighted wayfinding traces - offering methods for making streets more interactive and informative or to reveal underlying processes. Another simple addition to this concept comes via GOOD linking to Abitare and a post about guerilla street painting in Berlin:


:: image via GOOD

Via Abitare: "Last week a group of cyclists dumped 13 gallons of paint on the road at Berlin’s busy Rosenthaler Platz, creating a series of colourful lines as cars drove through. The various colours of paint were dumped onto the road in large puddles at different locations throughout the intersection. As traffic drove through, the paint was spread around creating lots of colourful lines. The whole action took only a few seconds: bikers had poured paint from big boxes in front of cars that waited for green lights. So the cars and their wheels, if the driver wanted it or not, became the brush tool for this guerilla public art piece.The creators of the project posted signs on post nearby explaining that the paint wasn’t harmful and would simply wash off with water."




:: images via Abitare

And a video of the site in action:



There's a great set of photos on Flickr.