Street artist uses digital signage as a backdrop for his art!

Street artist Posterchild turns digital signage into a backdrop to his art. He calls his latest project "New York Sunsets". It's pretty simple actually. Posterchild covers the front of digital screens with black and white drawings of the New York skyline. The video content displayed on the screens gets completely diffused by the white areas of his drawings, only showing as colorful, moving and flowing sunset behind his art.

It's quite an original idea but I don't think the people who are actually running this New York Subway screen network will appreciate... nor will the folks who's content is being turned into a bona fide Lava Lamp.

Posterchild even used his latest installation as a marriage proposal.

Good news for him... It worked!

So perhaps in a few years Mr. and Mrs. Posterchild will live in a house full of little baby PostIt Notes... but until then I'm sure we haven't seen the last New York Sunset installation.

So what's the lesson here?

It's true a lot of folks in our space are totally focused on technology...

Is my network secure?

Can a hacker get in and publish obscene material or somehow manipulate the display?

Well now we can add to this list "Can someone mechanically or physically alter the display and affect the visibility of what's shown on screen".

No one will deny Posterchild is very creative when he uses digital signage as a backdrop for his artwork. But the end result is someone else is paying for this backdrop and that's kind of problematic, to say the least.

It's unfortunate that no matter how smart digital signage operators can be, someone will eventually figure a way to mess with their installations.

You try to locate your displays at the most visible location. You wrap your equipment in vandal-proof enclosures and then someone comes along and tapes a picture over your screen, essentially blocking from view the content. Content that is paid for.

At least in this case the physical impact is benign. The material can be removed easily but what happens when someone starts to permanently deface screens? When taped canvas becomes spray paint or worse.

Anyone in this business needs to take a good look at the environment where they are mounting their screens. Sight lines are important but so is preserving the integrity of the display.

Otherwise it's all just pretty colors...