Urban tragedy: a street sign that lost its performativity
Posted: February 23rd, 2011 | 2 Comments »
This street sign, which indicates that it’s not allowed to park your car along this sidewalk recently went through a very intriguing process: it used to be several inches on the right, next to the curb (a careful observer would see a tiny black dot on the sidewalk). Being there, it was conveniently placed to prevent cars to be parked on the sidewalk. Few weeks ago, the signage has been moved next to the wall… It plays a limited role in preventing cars to park there.
The signage used to have both a meaning AND an affordance (preventing cars to park there)… it now has only a meaning… that people generally do not follow because they park their cars there in the evening.
To put it differently, these street signage lost its performativity; the capacity of an artifact (or language) to intervene in the course of human events.
[...] Pasta&Vinegar » Blog Archive » Urban tragedy: a street sign that lost its performativity liftlab.com/think/nova/2011/02/23/urban-tragedy-a-street-sign-that-lost-its-performativity/ – view page – cached This street sign, which indicates that it’s not allowed to park your car along this sidewalk recently went through a very intriguing process: it used to be several inches on the right, next to the curb (a careful observer would see a tiny black dot on the sidewalk). Being there, it was conveniently placed to prevent cars to be parked on the sidewalk. Few weeks ago, the signage has been moved… Read moreThis street sign, which indicates that it’s not allowed to park your car along this sidewalk recently went through a very intriguing process: it used to be several inches on the right, next to the curb (a careful observer would see a tiny black dot on the sidewalk). Being there, it was conveniently placed to prevent cars to be parked on the sidewalk. Few weeks ago, the signage has been moved next to the wall… It plays a limited role in preventing cars to park there. View page Show influential only (1) $(‘#filter-infonly’).change(function() { var el = $(this); var url = document.location.href; var checked = el.attr(‘checked’); if (checked) { document.location.href = url + ((/?/.test(url)) ? ‘&’ : ‘?’) + ‘infonly=1′; } else { document.location.href = url.replace(/[?&]?infonly=1/,”); } }); [...]
This way does not prevent a disabled on a wheelchair to move on the sideealk, it was an obstacle before.