NO_SYS KNOWS: The dawn of a new project

NO_SYS KNOWS

Hello, my name is Brian Behm, and I'm a creative director and motion designer based out of Austin, TX. You may know me from my work with Rooster Teeth. You may know me from my involvement in the motion design community. Up until today, no one has ever really known me as something other than a commercial designer/artist. That changes today, and as part of that, I'd like to introduce you to the first project from a new artist collective called No_Sys I've founded: See Beneath the Surface.

 I Wish You Really Saw Me.

See Beneath the Surface is about hidden meanings and hidden truths. The project started with a question. "What are the things that someone wants to say that they might not be able to bring themselves to say?" That led to a second question. "Can you create agency for someone if you can program a shirt with hidden messages?" 

John Carpenter's 1988 film "They Live" was also a big influence on this project. Even if you're unfamiliar with the movie, you might be aware that
Shepard Fairey stole "OBEY." from the film.

At the time, augmented reality didn't exist, but that's kind of what the glasses that Rowdy Roddy Piper finds in the film do. They reveal the propaganda, and the alien invasion, that's hiding in plain sight. 

So the shirts have hidden meaning. You see on the surface that there's a cool design, but under the surface, there's a mantra that, even if you're not looking at it, holds power because it's there.

We're thankful that we found a great platform called Artivive to publish our pieces through. Once you download their app and point it at one of the shirts or prints, you'll be able to see the art come to life and reveal it's hidden message. 

That hidden propaganda also led to our first sticker. Starting today, and for the next five months (or roughly twenty weeks), the No_Sys sticker is going to update at least a couple of times a week. When you get a sticker, you'll get three. There's a QR code to provoke people to scan it and discover what it is. We hope that you'll take the extras and put them to good use. One will never know what will pop up on the sticker. It might be provoking; it might be silly; it might just be something beautiful. What it definitely will be is a surprise, and we'd love for you to take your own agency and find places where someone could discover that they too can See Beneath the Surface.

There's more to say about No_Sys as a collective, but there will be time for that. In short, we're comprised of working professionals who have been too focused on working for our clients to focus on putting our own art into the world. We have things to say, and ways that we'd like to try to improve our communities. No_Sys for us is saying that No, we don't have to be a part of the System that we've been in up until now. I hope you'll come on this journey with us. There are a lot of cool things in store.

Thanks,
Brian

P.S. The store is open. Click here to see everything that's available.