I recently watched Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop which is a brief documentary about street art. One of the more famous artists shown was Shepard Fairey, the creator of the Obey campaign. I found his Obey project very interesting so I looked further into it...

Obey was created as a way to experiment with the public's reactions to the concept of the symbol. The project is exercised by placing the symbol (a sticker, or a stencil, or act of graffiti) all over public walls, billboards, bins etc. I think that the idea behind it is that we are harassed by commercial graphic images all the time within American/UK society and this small campaign helps some of us realize how passive we are about the process.

As for the rest of Banksy's movie, there seemed to be a general theme presented by the main artist, Thierry Guetta, which is that media is a form of being brainwashed. *SPOILER* This is why later in the movie he becomes a graffiti artist and titles himself Mr. Brainwash. *END SPOILER* The whole movie itself looks into the life of a famous low-level criminal artist and also looks into the absurd world of art that criticism and/or loves it. I would highly recommend it. I give it four stars! ****

To conclude, I found street art a very interesting area of study and can relate it a lot to Media Activism (my area of study at the moment).

Links: Banksy's website / The Obey website / Mr. Brainwash's website