h a l f b a k e r yWhat was the question again?
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Aeroplanes, by and large, are good looking machines. Few can approach the elegance of the Spitfire, but even your everyday airliner has it's own grace, backswept wings attached to a smooth, white fuselage that glints in the sun from any angle. Except for the underside.
Like most Londoners, I live
under a flightpath and that means that all I really see of these machines is the underneath. Invariably gun-metal grey and covered in carbuncles, the underneath of a plane resembles the underside of a ship. Not for us the joys of tail-decal spotting, every plane looks just like the last: grey and ugly.
How much more interesting it would be if airlines invited artists to decorate the underneath of their planes. Great splashes of colour could be marching through the skies, each vessel different from every other - an individual. The endlines lines of aeroplanes would liven up the grey skies instead of trying (and failing) to blend in with them. Up and coming artists would have the opportunity to hang their work on a huge canvas where all the world can see it, a high-profile high-gallery.
Of course they would be constrained by the shape of the aircraft, an unusual shape for a canvas which would require creative solutions - and therein lies the challenge for the artist. The fun lies in getting out of their cramped studio and painting a 60m canvas with a spray gun.
I will be waiting in the garden with a surface-to-air paintball launcher for the first airline to use this space for advertising.
Concept Sketch
http://www.purple-p...bakery/planeart.jpg
Who painted this one? [wagster, Apr 13 2005]
painted airbirds
http://www.pbs.org/.../features/warbirds/
[po, Apr 14 2005]
Virgin ‘billboard’ takes to the sky for Gillette
http://www.bandt.co...ews/b1/0c02d3b1.asp
Virgin Blue claims the aircraft, which has been labelled the ‘Gillette M3Power Plane’, is the biggest mobile billboard or ‘skyboard’ ever seen in Australia. [xaviergisz, Apr 14 2005]
Bennie and his Jets
http://www.airtran....ws/elton_planes.jsp
[krelnik, Apr 14 2005]
Dot-matrix skywriters
http://daryllang.co...dex.php?m=2004&w=24
[AbsintheWithoutLeave, Apr 15 2005]
[link]
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Kudos to the first person to recognise the artist featured in the concept sketch. |
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In practice, from the ground it's hard to see anything on the belly of an aircraft in flight due to the high contrast against the sky. They all look black no matter what the paint scheme; even all white, they look black. |
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You should get this one [skin], you introduced me to the artist's site. |
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[UB] - Yeah, like that. Why haven't I seen any? Maybe they didn't take off... |
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[bris] - That's a valid point and a problem. Maybe we could mount uplighters on the top of the engines. I might try and photoshop that into the sketch. |
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//due to the high contrast against the sky// Ahem, [wagster] said he was in London - no high contrast against the usually leaden skies. |
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Ahem. I live in Seattle whose sky is the backdrop for my observation. |
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A 'little' fiddling with the turbojet exhausts and one could write contrail vapor letters. |
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[FJ] There is (or used to be) a team of sky-writers who fly in simple line-abreast formation, with computer controlled smoke generators, writing dot-matrix messages. I'll try to find a link. |
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Mixed feelings; since we are subjected to such a barrage of visual imagery anyway, why do we have to have more? As Le Corbusier memorably remarked, "what we need is a good visual laxative." |
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Well, he was French. Lucky he didn't mention seagulls or something, really. |
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Make the external skin of the aeroplane out of some form of plasma screen display to avoid the sky contrast problem. |
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