A Graffiti Research Lab “report”: have we become part of the insatiable urban lifestyle, living like automatons in the grid, no more real than Atari games that revisit us in dreams?

What happens when a few intelligent, motivated, and more than slightly anti-control/opposition culture university grads imagine combining the world of open sourcing, high-end portable technology, and the wild style and attitude of roving street artists — virtual graffiti!

http://graffitiresearchlab.com/

In a Rolling Stone article, they declare, “A lot of graffiti artists have told us, ‘It’s my comic book fantasy to be able to do graffiti with a laser,’” so these young men, with backgrounds in design schools like Parsons and even NASA, decided to make this dream real by “outfitting graffiti artists with open-source technologies for urban communication,” which has included inventing “throwies” — illuminated magnets that stick to metal surfaces — and the Graffiti P.O.V. cam, which can be attached to a mask for those up-close-and-personal views of tagging. Let’s talk about such converging technologies, and the coming waves of the street art future, when dissemination, invention, and collusion will likely be very central to debates. What happens when in-built obsolescence or “instant art” becomes a war of mediated quick buzzword impressions and seering slogans, displayed on top of whole skyscrapers and public monuments, shimmering like monstrous LCD displays, or like a huge glowy highlighter marker sweeping across the skin of the city?

Today the Register Guard reports that local authorities have established a database on the web to curtail graffiti while also monitoring and even tracing repeat offenders. Note the sections below, which were culled from the article. In the meantime here is the website url:

http://graffiti.lcogweb.org/

Our class can monitor the web site not only to document the activities of the artists but also as a way to deconstruct the discourse adopted both by the authorities and the local community members.

From the paper:

Previously, the only way to report graffiti in both cities was to call public works departments during business hours.

The Web site — graffiti.lcogweb.org — will help Springfield build a database that could aid in tracking trends and identifying the work of repeat offenders, Springfield city spokesman Niel Laudati said.

… continue reading this entry.

Mark Jenkins Sculpture on Street Sign

One of the keen, emerging styles infiltrating public space is street-based sculptures, or the re-crafting of public signs, sidewalk space, and even industrial orange construction cones and municipal waste baskets to spur the imagination of people caught in workaday world (bland and humdrum) walking. Such works really invest in ideas that probe infinite possibilities — blurring the walls between gallery walls and street spectacle, further establishing a living museum of the streets. Is this gelatin-looking, unicorn-like horse an unconscious nod to both Blade Runner’s android detective dream sequence and the one broken in the Glass Menagerie? Does it unconsciously signify the horses running in the Patti Smith song from the mid-1970s: “…horse, horses, horses.” Or is it a secret nod to the Horace McCoy novel and Sydney Pollack movie, “They Shoot Horse, Don’t They?” Does it remind us, sadly,  that horses once roamed here, before the petrol sealed our fate? Or, does it evoke the Rolling Stone’s song, “Wild Horses.” Making us yearn to be a bit more free and strong?

http://www.xmarkjenkinsx.com/

The work of Julian Beever has been another street style maverick since the mid-1990s, when this Brit began to adopt Anamorphosis, which relies on vantage points to procur the illusion of 3-D surfaces, surprising people who imagine pavement as flat, gray, and utilitarian. Also a muralist, Beever uses such chalk techniques to open up fields of perspective when one least expects it — underfoot. How should we define such work, or contextualize it next to street sculpture, graffiti, or paper graffiti, such as stickers, or projection graffiti/bombing? Is this less or more dynamic? Does it suggest community issues, or interrogate space the same way, signifying borders and boundaries? Is it about “taking space” or autonomy — a way to “speak back” — or is it about something else?

http://www.impactlab.com/2006/03/09/amazing-3d-sidewalk-art-photos/

Skateboard Art

• Skateboarding is a lifestyle, a subculture, and within this subculture there are skateboarders that make art in many ways.
• Skateboarders, artists, graphic designers, create skateboard art.
• Skateboard art include (but is not limited to) the hand-making of the skateboard deck, drawing, painting, graphic design, engraving, performance, installation.
• The styles, subject matters and materials are the same as in the fine arts.
• The skateboard are is a wearable art that is damaged with use.
• However, there are skateboarders and art collectors that buy them as artwork and protect them.
• The most important in a skateboard is it shape as it affect the performance of the skateboarder.
• The art on the skateboard is secondary, however, it is important as a sign of the skater identity.
• For some skaters a skateboard brand is important as it represents an individual or a group of skaters with whom he/she identifies.
• For other skaters who do not feel represented by any brand, customization and DIY is more important.
• Skateboards have their own methods of distribution for their art. Some distribution methods are corporate and commercial. But, skateboarders also have opened galleries and museums dedicated to the skateboarding lifestyle and skateboard art.
• Skateboard art has gained access to fine art galleries and museums.

… continue reading this entry.

In case if you ever wondered about the “lore” of tossing shoes, or in this case, small “hippy trees,” across overhead wires, you might be suprised to find this DIY marketing trend to be a ground-up gimmick worth noting for both its offhand “outsider” commercial appeal and its sense of excorporating and appropriating industrial architecture and electric lifelines. Sent to me by student Ross:

http://hippytree.com/projects/blog/index.php?category=droptrees2