Paris Invaders!

Mario Invader on the way to Beaubourg

Walking around Paris, chances are you will stumble upon a mosaic tile in the form of first-generation video game characters on the side of buildings and bridges.  This is because there are 1000 of them around Paris.  These have been placed by the street artist, known as "Invader."  Although he has characters such as Mario (picture right) and Pacman, his specialty (and original works) are the aliens from the game Space Invaders, which is very apt for what he is doing.  Recently, he had an exhibit at La Générale to commemorate his 1000th "invader" placed in Paris.

The exhibition was very neat... it included a montage of all his works around Paris, a collection of his specially made shoes so that when he walks he leaves imprints of invaders, invader shaped waffles with powdered sugar, maps of the placement of his invaders, and his works on "rubiks cubism," where he arranges rubiks cubes together to form mosaic pictures of famous people, scenes, and rock album covers.

1000th Invaders in Paris exhibit at La Générale

A sampling of the mosaics placed around Paris

Rubiks Cubism

He has spread his invasion to other cities too.  His webpage has a list of some of them (I am not sure how up-to-date it is kept): http://www.space-invaders.com/sominv.html.  Marisa, Priya, and I found a few when we were in Rome, though Rome does not appear on this list.  But his exhibit featured a map of invaders he placed in Rome.

His wikipedia page says that his invaders are strategically placed around Montpellier in order to form a larger invader when outlined on a map.  Neato!

Marisa and Priya in front of our 2nd invader found in Rome, this one in Trastevere

An invader mocking us as we stand in the 2 hour line waiting to get inside the Vatican