As I ride the train into town I see graffiti covering fences, buildings and other areas. If I see professional athletes competing their uniforms are covered with advertisements for various enterprises. It is now approaching Christmas and lawns and houses are getting decorated with kitschy objects. Home-owners are even encouraged in this activity. Buses are covered with injunctions to eat, drink or buy.

I have tried to imagine a world in which all this optical clutter would disappear. What pleasure do the graffiti artists get? Would fewer people buy Sprite if they didn't advertise on buses? Could professional athletes play their games if their uniforms were restricted to their name, number and team insignia? They do so in the US.

Am I the only one bothered by visual junk?

I'm so with you on the optical junk. I'd like to add the clutter of booths and stalls in shopping malls, outside and inside. AND the constant blaring music, radios and whatnot. In shops, in malls, in restaurants.

My theory is that Australians are so overwhelmed by the space and silence our land has we fill our immediate surrounding up so we are not so reminded with how empty our continent and the sky above is and how insignificant we are.

Dear David,

I think that Ogden Nash summed it up
rather well:

"I think that I shall never see,
A billboard lovely as a tree,
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all."

I should read more Ogden Nash.

I see it a little differently.

At times when I've been on trains in and out of cities in Australia, I've seen many displays of graffiti on walls and so forth.
I consider them an expression of creativity, more glorious in its expression as the stereotypical graffiti artist is seen as somehow lacking in respect or creativity.
But even such delinquents have a desire to express themselves through art. And though some lift their noses at it (and I don't think much of the simplistic tags) I think some of these graffiti pieces are rather brilliant in their design and shading.

All the more beautiful because of their drab location and the fact that the artist is not doing it for money or fame, but merely because they wish to create something.

As far as the broader issue of clutter goes, I don't see it like that - in the cities, it can feel that way. But that's an expression of what cities are and the nature of man. Yes, there's billboards advertising beer or cola, there are signs everywhere, buses are plastered with advertisements advertising everything from financial services to nicotine gum. It's part and parcel of our human need to communicate in a myriad of forms, be it for love or money.

It's the visual equivalent of the chattering in a busy city square.

When it all seems to much, then I can escape to less crowded surroundings and see the countryside. That's the flip side of the coin.

So I don't see it as 'clutter'. I see it as the communication that bleeds from us. If I want blank spaces, I leave the city.

I've seen cities with a multitude of blank spaces - usually they're poor, drab lifeless places. They lack that visual chattering. The crowded images are a symptom of a vibrant city.

In a crowded city, I think the presence of blank spaces is a worrying sign.

TRTL, your creativity may be a good thing, if it is restricted to the property of those creating.

It has no place whatsoever on the property of those who don't want it. Grafitti vandals are antisocial, & encouraging them is pretty close to the same thing.