Bruce Guthrie Photos: DC -- Stickmen Robots

DC -- Stickmen Robots -- Notes:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by Bruce Guthrie who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the Creative Commons definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. If asked for permission in advance, I'll usually waive the non-commercial clause unless it's for people trying to sell the photos. A free copy of any printed publication using the photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from official signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Description of Subject Matter: A hundred or so tiles have been baked into various cities in the United States and some foreign countries. They have cryptic messages like "Toynbee ideas in Kubrick's 2001 resurrect dead on planet Jupiter" and apparently no one officially knows what they mean or who's putting them there. If you go to http://www.toynbee.net, you'll see a listing of where the original Toynbee tiles have been reported in various cities.

But Toynbee titles stopped, to be replaced by Stickman Robots which have similarly made their way across the country. Originally, I thought they were a cute Smithsonian tie-in to the new National Museum of the American Indian until I ran into one of them near Central Park in New York. I have no idea what their significance is but there are a *lot* of them in the Washington DC area.

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/18/AR2008091803439_pf.html

On the Trail of the Mysterious Stikman
By Stephen Lowman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Was it at 17th and Pennsylvania, by the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, that I first met stikman? Or was it crossing the street by the Justice Department at Ninth and Constitution? Maybe it was near the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art?
I don't remember, but I developed a thing for him.
Created by an unknown guerrilla street artist from corrugated plastic, vinyl records, burlap sacks or scraps of wood, metal or cloth, the robot figure, dubbed stikman, can be seen all over town. From the District to Boston and as far away as Hollywood, it has been spotted on building walls, newspaper boxes and traffic signs. But stikman is seen most often in crosswalks, as a sticker pasted to the pavement.
At first, I found something zombielike about stikman. Maybe it was the vacant stare and stiff pose. When I introduced him to a friend, she was dismissive, declaring him "creepy." Yet by the time I was pointing him out to other people, my affection had ...More...
Wikipedia Description: Toynbee tiles
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Toynbee tiles (also called Toynbee plaques) are about 250 messages of mysterious origin found embedded in asphalt in several major cities in the United States and three South American capitals. They are generally about the size of an American license plate, but sometimes considerably larger. They contain some variation on the following inscription:

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KUBRICK'S 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER.

Some of the more elaborate tiles also feature cryptic political statements or exhort readers to create and install similar tiles of their own. The material used for making the tiles was long a mystery, but evidence has emerged that they may be primarily made of layers of linoleum and asphalt crack-filling compound.

Articles about the tiles began appearing in the mid-1990s, though references may have started to appear in the mid-1980s.

Interpretation:

People and things referred to:

"Toynbee" refers to Arnold J. Toynbee, a famous historian. "Kubrick's 2001" refers to 2001: A Space Odyssey, co-written and directed by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.

The majority of tiles contain text similar to that above, although a second set is often found nearby. Several of these allude to a mass conspiracy between the press (including newspaper magnate John S. Knight of Knight-Ridder), the U.S. government, the USSR (even in tiles seemingly made years after the Soviet Union's dissolution), and Jews. The writing is of a similar style and poor quality.

A tile that used to be located in Santiago de Chile mentions a street address in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 2624 S. 7th Philadelphia, PA. The current occupants of the house know nothing about the tiles and are annoyed by people who ask.

Toynbee-tile enthusiasts believe that a native Philadelphian created the Toynbee tiles because of the large number that appear in the city, their apparent age, the variety of carving styles, the pres ...More...
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages here that have content directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos]
- 2006_DC_Toynbee: DC -- Toynbee tiles (3 photos from 2006)
- 2008_DC_Toynbee: DC -- Stickmen Robots (1 photos from 2008)
- 2009_DC_Toynbee: DC -- Stickmen Robots (2 photos from 2009)
- 2009_NY_Toynbee: NY -- Stickmen Robots (1 photos from 2009)
- 2011_DC_Toynbee: DC -- Stickmen Robots (17 photos from 2011)
- 2012_DC_Toynbee: DC -- Stickmen Robots (56 photos from 2012)
- 2013_03_09F_Toynbee: DC -- Stickmen Robots (2 photos from 03/09/2013)
- 2013_03_15I_Toynbee: DC -- Stickmen Robots (2 photos from 03/15/2013)
- 2013_03_17E_Toynbee: DC -- Stickmen Robots (2 photos from 03/17/2013)
- 2013_04_01D_Toynbee: DC -- Stickmen Robots (1 photos from 04/01/2013)
- ...More (16 total)...
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Arts]
2013 photos: So far, my camera is mostly the Fuji X-S1 but, depending on the event, I'm also using a Nikon D7000 and Nikon D600. Trips this year have been limited to a Civil War Trust conference in Memphis.
Photo Contact: Email Bruce Guthrie.