Web 2.0 celebrities are ten a penny these days, which is why it is all the more impressive that Nokia has managed to create one of its own convincing counter-culture characters, all in the name of promoting the N82. Enter Stavros, the (presumably Greek) genius of what he has termed ‘position art’.
The idea is that Stavros is a pretentious artist who has managed to stumble upon an idea for a new kind of art that, though a little tongue in cheek, looks like lots of fun. Basically he uses the GPS in his N82 to plot a routes through cities that make pictures. In his own words, the world is his canvass, and the N82 is his brush.
It’s an interesting publicity stunt, not least because in spite of the fact that Stavros and his ‘position art’ is a bare faced attempt to tap into web 2.0 subculture to promote a product (a path that many have failed at before), Stavros is genuinely quite funny. With his polo neck, horn rimmed glasses and broken Borat-esq English, Stavros is hardly an original character, but he is certainly an amusing accompaniment to Nokia’s aggressive push into the GPS market. How long before some less than web savvy artists miss the joke here and have a go at carving their own niche in ‘position art’? Actually, that probably won’t happen but it would be great if it did (especially for Nokia).
The actual artistic idea is a bit of a cheap rip-off of Jeremy Wood’s GPS Drawing (http://www.gpsdrawing.com). I almost think Nokia would do better to highlight existing creative uses of their products