Call it graffiti. Call it political street art. Whatever it is, it is causing people to stop and look at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th Street in the District.
A group called the One Campaign stenciled actual tweets on the street at that location and in others in the D.C. area as part of an effort to bring attention to hunger and poverty issues ahead of the G8 Summit that will be held Friday and Saturday at Camp David in Frederick County, Md.
According to the One Campaign's website, the messages were created by "a clever robot that can print short tweets, tweetetes if you will, (40 characters or less) on road surfaces." Clever indeed. The One Campaign said it is a "mobile, tweet-fed, hydraulic robot that uses non-toxic, water-soluble paint (Crayola Washable Paint) to print nearly real-time tweets from all over the world. It is be pulled by an SUV at approximately 5 MPH and transcribes approximately 500 messages per mile."
The "street tweets" also appeared in Thurmont, Md., according to the Frederick News-Post. Among the tweets sprayed on the roadway there were some taken from Gov. Martin O'Malley's feed, as well as Rep. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Steny Hoyer, according to the newspaper.
The One Campaign is requesting more tweets from people to use on roadways.
"Better still, if we print your message we’ll even send a pic of it back to you to share it with your friends," the group said in a post on its website.
The group told the News-Post that it has received all the proper permits to spray the messages and will clean up any remaining messages after the G8 Summit.
