Toynbee tiles

The most noticeable thing about the corner of 84th street and 5th avenue on the East Side is by far the looming Metropolitan Museum of Art, but a piece of very peculiar and uniquely street art can be seen here without even entering the museum. In fact, there is no way that this piece could ever be in a museum. This odd work, one of a series of pieces dubbed “Toynbee tiles” because of their original inscriptions, is a linoleum tile embedded in the asphalt halfway across a crosswalk.

This specific Toynbee tile is mostly unreadable, as wear from passing vehicles has broken up many of the words. What is decipherable is “… of Hades… one many… the Metropolis in Society…”. In its prime, this tile would have been visible and legible to any person crossing the street at this corner. However, it is in line with these Toynbee tiles to have strange and seemingly meaningless messages even when they are complete. The original tiles all bore the words

“TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KUBRICK’S 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER”.

While this message may seem completely cryptic to an ordinary reader, sci-fi enthusiasts have recognized references to two sci-fi greats: John Kubrick and Ray Bradbury. The reference here is to Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which a crew of astronauts journeys to Jupiter, and the final surviving member of their crew experiences death through a portal near Jupiter, and then rebirth. Bradbury also comes in, as he wrote a short story entitled “The Toynbee Convector”, which discussed resurrection from the dead as a process that was possible scientifically.

This is a thought provoking idea, and the unknown artist’s decision to place the tiles on the street where they’d be visible to the walking public shows that he or she either wanted to actually alert the public of a conspiracy, or share a philosophical truth. However, since the original artist included directions on how to place the tiles on some of his own tiles, it is more that probable that many of the tiles seen nowadays are duplicates which utilize the same font and color scheme. The missing words make it difficult to tell what this particular artist wanted to say, but from the general theme of the words, it can be inferred that had to do with the relationship between urban society and the afterlife, along the same theme, perhaps, as the originals.

The anonymity of the artists is amplified by the way that these tiles are seen by the public: first, as bits of the tile peeking through the asphalt as cars wear the top layer down, then as the full tile, and later on, as the bits that are gradually wearing away. The revealing of the tiles occurs slowly, and is effected by vehicles, not the artist themselves. This makes their messages seem more like revealed truths than the musings of a crazy conspiracist. They are not permanent, but they last long enough for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to see them. The artist’s choice of medium and placement has gained these pieces a formidable presence in the world of street art.