Disruptive Realism

On Halloween night, 1938, millions of Americans turned on their radios to hear that Martians were invading the planet. That was, of course, Orson Welles’ infamous adaptation of the H.G. Wells’ novel War of the Worlds. Many missed the disclaimer and believed the invasion to be real, and some newspapers and public figures decried it as cruelly deceptive.

But Welles’ broadcast is a progenitor of a movement dubbed Disruptive Realism by Dave Hoffer. He’s the associate creative director for the global innovation firm frog design in San Francisco. And he’s joining us with some more recent examples that he’s noticed. Watch his video describing disruptive realism here.

One example Hoffer looks to includes the graffiti artist Banksy, once a rising star in the British art world, now truly an international man of mystery - no one knows who he is. Another form is “reverse graffiti,” which involves making pictures by cleaning dirty public surfaces.

Last month in New York a cadre of volunteers handed out more than a million copies of The New York Times, dated July 4, 2009, with headlines like "Iraq War Ends: Troops to Return Immediately" and "Maximum Wage Law Succeeds." The guys behind it, who call themselves The Yes Men, made a video of people’s reactions to the fake newspaper. Watch it here:

There's also the little intervention by London designer Bruno Taylor. He put a swing in a bus stop, so while waiting for the bus, you can swing back and forth. Taylor advocates for bringing play back into public space. So while there’s no real political message, it still causes us to stop and re-evaluate the world around us.

Improv Everywhere, a New York-based prank collective, has organized events like "Operation Best Buy," where people dressed like Best Buy employees and converged on one of the chain's stores, and "Frozen Grand Central," where more than 200 people froze at the same time for five minutes in New York's Grand Central Station earlier this year. But the group's founder, Chuck Todd, has come under criticism for setting up urban pranks for clients like Taco Bell and Yahoo. Here's a recent video, in which 20 Improv Everywhere agents personally welcomed home total strangers at JFK airport:

(Graffiti art by Banksy)