Improv Everywhere - Look Up More

Improv Everywhere - Look Up More (1) (QuickTime) [Improv Everywhere]
Improv Everywhere - Look Up More (2) (Windows Media) [Bullemhead]

Not exactly moving "images", but here's a fun example of a physical instantiation of the split-screen technique, using a building's showroom windows as subframes. Improv Everywhere is a group of kindred spirits who perform missions of "organized fun" in NYC, and Look Up More was one of their largest missions:

I was walking through Union Square a few months ago, and something caught my eye. In the window of the new retail store Forever 21, a girl was dancing with wild abandon. It was at night, and she was brightly lit standing next to the store’s mannequins. I stood and watched and laughed... It was amazing how eye-catching her performance had been. I began to look at the building as a whole... I figured if one girl in one window had been so fascinating to look at, it would be incredible to see someone dancing in every single window in the building... The windows provided a perfect stage for a mission. Not only are there so many of them, but they are perfectly situated across the street from one of Manhattan’s largest parks. At any given moment, there are hundreds of people walking through the park and out of its subway station. It should be no problem attracting an audience.

The mission page has lots of fun details and photos. Here is one participant's short account.

Photo is from seanich's Flickr photoset.

Via Screenhead.

Comments

[masaru]

It reminds me of what I've seen in London. Shops/offices often decorate their windows upstairs from the inside, sometimes with messages, obviously to catch the eyes of the people in the double-decker buses.

Looking out from the upper level in the bus I also had a thought of old department stores where the whole significance of being there was to become part of the spectacle of the masses. Whereas in the postmodern time as we've come to live it, sense of privacy or individuality gets displayed, being drawn out into 'the public' space.
I don't know which I would prefer, but I like my bus journeys in London, having a distant, more objective view around myself and would have laughed at the site from Union Sq. with as much pleasantness.

[James]

Thanks for your observations, Masaru. Yes, part of what makes Look Up More so delicious is the way it unexpectedly brings people into a public and theatrical spectacle, across lines they have drawn around themselves and their usual surroundings. Albeit within a safe distance.