signals in the noise

There are hidden messages. Some of these are guerrilla art, intentional acts of expression hidden in plain view. Some are the simple coincedental juxtaposition of informative elements into a psuedo-message. Do the latter count as messages? Guerrilla art instances that I've been thinking of recently are:

Screaming baby, There was a sign, maybe a route number or instructions to pedestrians. Smallish for a traffic sign. But the original sign had been covered with a poster of a screaming babies face. The poster was the same size as the original poster and the same black and light grey.

That Stupid Pencil. No link. This was a stunt that some people at my undergraduate institution* tried where they drew pictures on the boards of empty classrooms and took out classified adds in the paper which featured a cartoon pencil sharpened to a nub and a sentence like "It's coming." The problem was that the cartoonist in school paper had been using the same sigil as a signature for over a year. Anyone observant enough to notice their guerilla message had probably also noticed the cartoon. When I asked about it, I was told there was no big event planned, it was just to get people talking, but the stunt was never that interesting.

Andre the Giant. This campaign had some advantages: Andre the Giant is cool, and the posse vibe simultaneously intimidates and offers promise of belonging to a secret clique. Some people still look at me oddly when I mention that "Andre the Giant has a posse." If you've never heard of Andre's posse, then how did you get here.

Ana Ng. The song that really turned me to They Might Be Giants. I had appreciated them before I heard this song, but only because of their novelty flavor and because I had friends who liked them. I can remember a time when MTV would show this video back to back with Rockit by Herbie Hancock. MTV was cool once. When was the last time they put anything by a veteran of the Miles Davis Quartet in heavy rotation?

There's an important difference between Andre the Giant and Ana Ng. In the first case, some guy who sells t-shirts has conspired to hide his messages in the environment, while in the second, the messages arise on their own.

* refering to your "undergraduate institution" immediately identifies me as one of those people who aren't to be trusted.