Juliette

Leave your mark

Revealing secret messages

A challenge to make peeing in the streets more fun and turning pee into stories. Chaim Becker made a project out of this for his graduation project at the Design Academy of Eindhoven.

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Leave your mark performance - Designer Chaim Becker created a coating that reveals the message underneath when you pee on it. Designer Chaim Becker created a coating that reacts on urine. Chaim Becker

Peeing in the streets is easy, fast and sometimes very practical, for man at least. But sometimes, it also has some bad consequences. You can get a fine, create damage on buildings or leave an awful smell. To create more awareness about public urination, Chaim Becker created a project where a coating, that reacts when it comes in contact with urine, is applied to a wall. When the urine touches the coating, the color changes. In this way, someone can leave for example his name and a personal message, or you can make a text/image appear.

This can work in two ways. You can either make one wall interesting and fun with messages written in pee everywhere, so you only have one wall where everyone wants to go. It also works the other way around, that you pee on a piece of wall and the message '€90 fine' appears: less fun and more of a warning. Chaim says it's the city who decides which option they prefer.

Interested to see how it works? In this video, Chaim gives a demonstration of the coating: