Kickstart My Subway Line!

I can't believe I forgot about this until now (sorry Nick!) but I wanted to give a shout out to an artist friend of mine named Nick Azzaro (http://www.fotoazzaro.com/). Nick's currently working on raising funds for an art installation in the Chicago Blue Line subway tunnel between Clark/Lake and Washington stops. I think this is kind of like what the New Jersey Path trains do with advertising, but cooler. He's gotten the company Submedia to agree to install his animation "flipbook" for $18,000, the cost of materials only (no labor costs). The idea is that there are hundreds of images and spotlights in the train tunnel, and the speed of the train will turn his artwork into an animation that 150,000 riders will get to view out of the train windows every day.

Anyways, Nick doesnt have the $18,000 lying around for this project, so he's gotten the backing of a program called Kickstarter where people can learn about the project and make donations. The way it works is that if you donate any money, you won't actually get charged for it unless he meets his funding goal by September 1. Check out the video and if you can, please consider supporting the project. Either way, it would be just dandy as candy if you could please pass this along to friends.

Here's the Kickstarter link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fotoazzaro/the-chicago-blue-line-animation-project

Here's an article about Kickstarter in the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/technology/start-ups/25kick.html?_r=1&em