The Bubble Project, originally created by Ji Lee in an attempt to give the average citizen a voice in advertising/marketing, printed thousands of blank stickers in the shape of a speech bubble and posted them all over New York City ads. People were thus invited to write something within these bubbles, as they stood at bus stops, passed by an ad on the street, etc. Ji Lee suggests that “The Bubble Project instantly transforms these annoying corporate monologues into open public dialogues.” The comments are often “social, political, philosophical and surreal” and provide an overall “mood” of those who see these each day in the city, as well as a sort of brief (though often powerful) critique of an advertisement.
Lee afterwards takes photos of the filled in bubbles/advertisements and posts them on his website. The Bubble project has since spread to cities all over the globe. Though this project is often considered to be mere vandalism, Lee prefers to use the term “unauthorized” to describe them. Ironically, the Bubble Project since has helped his career and advertising agencies often seek him out for his out-of-the-bubble thinking.
The bubble project has also been conceptually linked with what we now call “ad busting” – see http://www.adbusters.org/ for some examples.
To see more visit www.thebubbleproject.com
For this particular project – you will take a similar approach by choosing an advertisement (either from the paper, a poster, or a magazine that is primarily visual in nature) and “bust it” by incorporating a few words and/or altered images in such a way as to provide some social or political commentary. You can either produce this piece by taking a current ad off the internet and manipulating it via Adobe Photoshop or you can work with it physically (but then you’ll need to take a photograph and upload).
