The nortec manifesto — to turn the madness of the border into art — doesn't end with music. Jorge Verdin and Fritz Torres, who perform with the Nortec Collective under the name Chlorofila, are also graphic designers, and they have plugged nortec's feel for cultural collage into visual art, turning out album covers, concert posters and T shirts celebrating their world view. "Mostly what we do," says Torres, "is take the traditional images people have of Tijuana and have fun with them."

The duo work primarily on Macintosh computers in their home studios, and their greatest hits include the nortec trademark — a tiny, colorful bandido with guns a-blazing — a satire of a ubiquitous border wanted poster; and a blue wash of a belligerent-looking Tijuana cop with culero (slang for a__h___) splashed across it.

So far, nortec art is Pop Art, and like most Pop Art it contains an abundance of energy and irony. But it wasn't until Verdin left Tijuana to go to school at San Diego's City College that he realized the images in his native land might have artistic value. "When I was going to school in San Diego," he says, "I went to a talk by [graphic designer] David Carson. He was showing a slide show of what inspired him. There was some Expressionist stuff, some Dada, some Surreal. Then he starts showing handpainted signs from Rosarito" — a seaside town just outside Tijuana — "and I said, 'Holy s___!' You know, I've seen this stuff all my life, and I've never grabbed the concept that we're surrounded by all this incredibly interesting, even beautiful, stuff. A gringo had to show this to me!" He raises his hands in mock exasperation. "The point is, we have an easy job because the raw materials we're using are cool to begin with."

Torres and Verdin's posters dot the Tijuana landscape from telephone poles to restaurant bathrooms, and their T shirts and promotional postcards are everywhere you look at nortec shows. But Raul Cardenas Osuna, an architect who runs a design studio called Torolab out of an abandoned shopping mall near the Tijuana airport,

has a design idea that would be visible from miles away. He wants to create a giant installation that would physically span the border and function as a gallery for multimedia art. "This is a place where no one is from," says Cardenas. "Everyone is an immigrant here. But we are the first generation to make Tijuana home. We want to be here, and we want to examine the richness of life here."