We like to keep track of bus couture in London: godlessness, bendiness, newness. But what about the bus stops? What about the tops of bus stops?
Alfie Dennen, the man behind Moblog and various geo-cyber-virtual-socially networked things like geoglyphs and real world fun with Google maps has a great new idea for them: Bus.tops. Bus.tops are a far more sophisticated version of bus stop innovation than the potato meteorites of 2006. This scheme would place networked LED display boards in the tops of bus stops that show pieces of digital art, curated and contributed by established artists or submitted and uploaded by the public.
Tiny short stories, roof top confessions, a game that places clues on every third bus stop of every bus route that's a multiple of three, a comic book that unfolds panel by panel, stop by stop... The possibilities are quite astounding and London could look completely different with these bus stop roofs providing outlets for our creativity, marking roads and routes throughout the cityscape with manifestations of our imaginations.
Bus.tops are not a reality yet; the application for the London 2012/Arts Council fund Artists Taking the Lead has been submitted, and we hope to see these story telling bus tops as part of London's transformation for the Olympic Games in 2012. With the infrastructure and technology in place, the legacy could be passengers looking forward to traffic jams and congested roads because they're just dying to see what the next Bus.top is showing. The only downside is... no one would sit downstairs.
