According to Graffiti Research Lab and its sister organization, the Anti-Advertising Agency, those cartoon lite brites are an example of corporate, not political terrorism:
It’s well known that marketing steals ideas from artists. But the connections are rarely so clear as they are in this case, and we don’t often get to see it backfire in such a spectacular way.
Apparently the lite brites were a bastardized version of a graffiti art device created by the Graffiti Research Lab for artists:
Again and again, as advertisers desperately try to break through the clutter they create, they try more desperate methods. The perfect irony to this story is that advertisers can’t get it right. What attracted the attention of the bomb squad was the wiring, circuitry, and large batteries that Interference Inc. added to the G.R.L.s original design in order to be more financially efficient. Once it was discovered as harmless, Interfrence’s next problem was the media’s derision because it was yet another desperate attempt to put advertising in front of people’s eyes.
Each week it becomes more clear in the media that advertising is using illegal methods, yet the fines and arrests remain disproportionately on graffiti writers and activists. We hope more people will see the hypocrisy of arresting, jailing, and fining individual expression of people like BORF, countless street artists, RNC protesters, and cyclists from critical mass, when there has still been zero jail time for CEOs of advertising and marketing firms that knowingly and repeatedly break the law promoting corporate products.
I don’t think it was against the law (but maybe it was, who knows) but I call your attention to a problem I had with Bank of America taking over the Harvard subway station.
