Street artists who take over outdoor advertisements generally do so in the dark of night and at risk of being arrested. But a group of street artists recently took a different approach by replacing several NYC ads with virtual artworks – no crime involved. The augmented reality app was developed by PublicAdCampaign and The Heavy Projects to rid the outdoor experience of ever-present advertisements.

After installing the app, you only have to find one of the ads targeted by the AR intervention and hold your mobile device up to it. It will be replaced in real time with unique art created by one of the featured public ad takeover artists including PosterBoy, John Fekner and OX. The project is necessarily short-lived since the ads programmed into the app won’t last long, but the group is figuring out how to feed current ads into the app to keep it constantly up-to-date.