What the Hell?
“Shoes on Wires” - (shooz - awn - wahyuhrz) - noun (pl) - shoesonwires.com - urban and suburban semiotic, indicating unusual media in the vicinity (photos, books, music, sounds); gang sign for free, Creative Commons imagery (”Dawg, check this dope Shoes on Wires for the new album cover.”); iconic image of the 20th and 21st centuries, combining elements of street art, consumerism, identity, and mass culture.
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Shoes on Wires is an alternative media portal, a place to find “Something Else.” This is your source for:
- FREESTOCK IMAGERY - Strong and unusual images that you won’t find on any microstock or stock photo site. Shoes on Wires’ freestock images are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution license - they are FREE to use, providing you include credit for them. Any Shoes on Wires image tagged with “freestock” or “Creative Commons” can be used in this way. Ideal for cd covers, posters, blogs, or any publication that is off the beaten path.
- PRINT-ON-DEMAND BOOKS - Looking for quirky, unusual books that you won’t find in Chapters? You’ve come to the right place. Shoes on Wires produces bookstore-quality books through Blurb, including the “Practical Fieldguide to Alien Abduction,” and “Woodlands: Coda.”
- WEIRD CREATIVE COMMONS MUSIC - Illbient, dark ambient, soundscape, trip hop - Shoes on Wires music is juicily bizarre, multi-layered and ripe for the picking. Download any of these tracks directly from this site for free, use them in whatever project you have going for free, and just give Shoes on Wires a credit. Nice.
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Why Shoes on Wires? As you might expect when it comes to something as (un)important as an online name, there are a number of reasons. I’ve always been amused and fascinated by the practice. I love that it’s a bit of an enigma and has some lore attached to it - “It’s a sign of gang activity,” “It’s a sign that drugs are dealt there.” Ha! It’s a sign that somebody had some old shoes and wanted to leave a mark that would be difficult (or at least time consuming and inconvenient) to remove. It’s an urban practice, largely, and urban landscapes are my favorite subjects. I also like the stong graphic quality that a pair of shoes flung over a wire has - backlit against a sky deepening to twilight, why, it’s almost iconic. Not to mention that it’s free advertising for me - I’m betting that anyone who has heard my name will think of me and my work when they next see a pair of sneakers hanging from a telephone line. Hey, that’s sneaky! Or should that be sneakery?
