Slashdot Mirror
Reverse Graffiti
glawrie writes "UK Graffiti artist 'Moose' thought he had come up with a perfect socially friendly approach to his art - to trade paints for cleaning fluid. An article in the UK's Independent Newspaper describes how he has created graffiti by taking '... any dirty inner-city wall or pavement, place a template over it, and scrub the concrete clean, revealing an image as sharp as any spray paint which fades with time.' Moose was commissioned by a subsidiary of drinks manufacturer Diageo to create some 'clean' graffiti in Leeds to promote their vodka brand Smirnoff to local students. However, this work was subsequently condemned by Gerry Harper, a Leeds councillor, as 'sheer vandalism'. With wonderful irony, the council demanded that the artist 'clean-up' the graffiti that appeared in one of the city's gloomiest underpasses. Maybe all those senseless vandals out there will now think twice in future before scrawling 'Clean Me' on the back of vehicles overdue for a wash... But perhaps the state is now going too far - surely it is only a matter of time before rainfall is similarly targetted by the good guys."
Brings new meaning to "Clean up your act!"
His parents must be regretting that wording now.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
They can't show any pictures of it? Anybody have links?
...
In my town (Halifax, Canada) we have a few walls which are owned by local companies which have been 'donated' to local grafitti artists. You can go down there any time and see a lighted wall of absolutely amazing artwork, and it changes almost every day.
I don't see what the big problem is.. just give the artists enough places to paint and the problem will reduce if not disappear. What's the problem with that?
That sounds like a really smart idea. The only problem I can see is that you're limited in choice of color. Many "professional" graffiti artists like to create very colorful works that help "brighten" the area. I still haven't figured out if I *like* professional graffiti, or if it even helps improve the area, but new options for those who do like it are always welcome.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
People really shouldn't be doing that anyway because it's very possible to scratch the finish on the car and do actual damage. Sure, it's not as bad as keying it, but it's still uncalled for.
Did he have a mobile phone in his back pocket when he did this? Am I missing the part that relates to nerds?
Why does the article present this as some sort of travesty? It is what it is, and that is unlawful advertising on public space. To get rid of it would require public money to clean the rest of the overpass. It's graffiti, period. Why can't people just leave things alone, is it that hard to resist 'making your mark?'
I mean come on, is this for real? We're supposed to feel sorry for this guy and Smirnoff? Gimme a break, they crossed the line and should be responsible.
It's become a rather sad state of affairs if people are prosecuted for CLEANING the bloody place... On the one hand I can see why a council would be upset about people putting up ad's without a permit, but if I were them I'd be worried that their was wall's so dirty that people could write long lasting (presumably) adverts on them by just cleaning them...
i've read and reread the blurb about the article, as well as read the article itself. i dont get it.
" With wonderful irony, the council demanded that the artist 'clean-up' the graffiti that appeared in one of the city's gloomiest underpasses."
Isn't reverse psychology, wonderful?
Now what do we do to get people to eat their vegtables?
It's funny, until you realize he's not doing grafitti, he's doing commercials.
This is alot more work than most would put in, that being said i don't see this getting picked up by ur average street vandal.
For The Best Jazz/Hip-hop fusion > COlD DUCK
You know, I believe in people taking initiative and helping out the community, and I also believe in taking responsibilities and powers away from government, so I think it would be wonderful if people would take a little bit of time once in a while and clean some random part of public property. It will only make the community a cleaner place to live. Ooooooh well.
But perhaps the state is now going too far
So, when I went to ncsu (ncsu.edu), the had the tunnel of free expression (so you could paint whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted), where people could legally paint "graffiti", and it got painted over once a week/month, whatever. Why not provide a productive outlet for prospective artists?
Fill in for lack of sig.
What do they mean by clean up?
And "Smirnoff has removed the offending work - not because of the legality of the threat but by "its own volition" it said." but how did he remove it?
Go dump more dirt on the place, or clean the rest up?
The solution is, of course, for the City to keep everything clean, then this doesn't work. The (hidden) message to clean up the city is the one that the City really has the problem with because they can't claim that it is clean when a message 'written in clean' is easily readable.
do they expect him to splatter mud on the walls, or would they prefer him to grafitti with paints or ????
"People really shouldn't be doing that anyway because it's very possible to scratch the finish on the car and do actual damage."
If your finish is that fragile? Maybe you shouldn't even be driving that vehicle? Wouldn't want road grime to scratch it.
If you thought that was weird, check this guy out. He goes all around the world creating mosaic grafiti of various space invaders.
Steal This Sig
Why do some people think that they have the right to deface property they don't own in any way?
Some buildings benefit from a hundred years of "patina", and marring that affects their value.
Not only that, but it reduces the presentability of the neighborhood, reducing property values for everyone.
And it's just selfish, stupid, and ugly.
I just hope that anyone about to defend this consider how much you hate what you think of as unwanted commercial messages all over the place. Besides pop-up blockers, many /. readers block banner ads and the like as well.
It's not their place to be placing these messages. It's not a matter of betterment of public spaces, that's just a distraction from the fact that these are unwanted commercial messages placed where the advertiser wants them.
-PM
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
You'd imagine the corporate world would have enough avenues for subjecting us to a continuous barrage of advertising without the need for graffiti, no matter how cleverly disguised as "cleaning", or illegally flyposting (hello Sony). Ads on TVs, in newspapers, on billboards, in trains, on the windows in trains, the bottom half of the "mind your fingers" warning on the train doors, the entire train, the front of the steps leading from the platform, stickers on the ticket gates, the windows of taxis, one side of my commuter pass, at the bottom of my shop receipts... it never stops. I dunno, my office is the most advert-free environment I see during the day.
I was having a look around to see if there were any photos of this and found instead references to them doing this back in Oct 2003.
e ting-examples.shtml#oct2003
http://www.bizhelp24.com/marketing/guerrilla-mark
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*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
it's Feng Shui graffiti
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
From the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003:
Help with identifying 'tags': Tags are the distinctive signatures used by people who cause graffiti. The government has set up 'Operation Scrub-it', a partnership between the British Transport Police, Crimestoppers and transport providers. It aims to create a national database to record graffiti tags that would help prosecute frequent graffiti offenders. The reporting of graffiti is encouraged and there will be rewards for information leading to successful convictions. The public have been invited to help the authorities in identifying these tags and thus in fighting the graffiti problem.
Better add Smirnoff to the list.
IBM painted those logos all over the place.
But perhaps the state is now going too far - surely it is only a matter of time before rainfall is similarly targetted by the good guys.
Sorry, but I agree that "clean graffiti" is still graffiti. No, this is not like the rain. If you don't believe me, then consider this situation: I make some "clean graffiti" in the shape of a swastika or making racial slurs. Are you offended, or are you happy that I'm cleaning a few selected parts of a gaffiti-covered wall? Personally, I would be offended if someone did this. So how do you these type of messages if you don't acknowledge that "clean graffiti" really is an unauthorized message (graffiti).
Maybe all those senseless vandals out there will now think twice in future before scrawling 'Clean Me' on the back of vehicles overdue for a wash...
I did that to the hood of my dad's old '63 Pontiac, which hadn't been washed in ages. Being a clever grrl, I used a rag dipped in Turtle Wax, so as not to be destructive.
Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the Turtle Wax would actually remove the dull surface of the paint, leaving the car forevermore to bear a (slightly bright) sign, quite legible from above, that read, "Wash me!"
My dad didn't kill me, obviously, nor did he take the hint. I guess I knew it was a forlorn hope, when he epoxied a chunk of plywood to replace the rusted-out floor in the front passenger seat.
He sure got his money's worth out of that car, though.
Lemon curry?
While I say it absolutely sucks that such an interesting and unique artform is be scrutinized like it is by the Leeds police, they do have a point IF he is breaking the laws concerning advertisment. But calling his artwork "pure vandalism" when it is in fact done by the process of CLEANING DIRTY @#@$% WALLS IN THE FIRST PLACE ... thats just lame.
was supposed to read, "since IBM painted those PEACE, LOVE, LINUX logos all over the place."
I've seen this exact thing on a TV ad, it shows a man in a subway station holding a mop+bucket, then as a train rushes through this man is rushing about sonic the hedge-hog style, you see the end result with a smooth logo and design on a scrubbed clean train.
Think it may have been for Jiff cleaner or something, or maybe it was hard liquor commercial (we have lots in the UK) I can't really remember... I was pissed at the time.
The legal definition seems to involve 'defacing'. The dictionary definition of defacing seems to be 'disfiguring', so there is a possibility that graffiti could be taken to be anything which changes the appearance of an object. Does whether the change is for the better or worse come into it? Surely this is a subjective judgement?
So do people think projecting an image onto a structre, using light, would be seen as 'graffiti' by a court?
Having been involved with 'decorating' a few cars at weddings, I will say that wirting on windscreens with shaving cream is a no-no. The shaving cream runs onto the paint work and leaves 'clean spots' which are impossible to merge back into the surrounding paint. The result is a permenantly blotchy car.
There were also some university students who painted a run down railway station bright pink to 'brighten it up' a little. Despite the result being very cool, they got convicted for doing it.
I wonder if Smirnoff is an effective cleaner...
Oddly, authorities never cleaned it up. It's like it's become an unofficial but implicitly sanctioned public forum.
From the article:
Smirnoff considers the artist's work a perfect way to reach a teenage market....
tsk, tsk.
When I was a student at Sydney University in the early 80's I belonged to a caving club (SUSS) that used to abseil down the face of the Unis Library during Student Orientation Week. This building was about 9 stories high and clad with copper - very nicely tarnished to an elegant hue. One day, when I was just getting out of my abseling gear at the bottom a guy from 'BUGAUP' (Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions, very active in the 80's in Australia, they used to write 'BUGGA UP' over walls) approached me with an interesting idea. This guy asked if I could abseil down and use Brasso to graffiti the copper cladding! Geez man, I did want to get a degree. Still it was tempting :-)
Fun=Linux, caving and anything technical.
Did it cross the author's mind that it wasn't that they had marked public areas, or the manner of the advertisements but that their message was to encourage drinking to groups that parents and thusly politicians view as high-risk when it comes to alcohol consumption?
Make your own conclusions about the choices college students make but I think it is in poor taste to advertise alcohol at College students especiall since College students have plenty of more important things to worry about then what booze to pick up this weekend. Not to mention the social, societal, and health issues that binge drinking causes.
So drink responsibly. And think twice before you advertise to a group that parents obsess over because they've just left the nest.
Something intelligent here.
I wanted to see if there any hidden links on that page, which there weren't, but I still suggest having a look at the source for it.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
For years kids used soapy water to wash the crud off the walls of the Sunset (Hwy 26) tunnels and express their feelings. One caveat: I haven't gone thorugh the tunnels in question for some time now, so I don't know if it hasn't gotten more destructive or not.
Seeing how he's operating under the god given mission of selling vodka to sixteen year olds, I fail to see what's got the Leeds council in an uproar.
/sarcasm
"Smirnoff considers the artist's work a perfect way to reach a teenage market "
An excellent idea. Microsoft should pay an roaming artist (dressed in a butterfly suit of course) to fingerpaint "Linux sucks!" into dirty cars/windows.
One of the single biggest problems this country has is the letter of the law is far more important than the intent. It's one of the reasons we are so over regulated. Most lawyers make their livings by distorting the law to benefit their clients. "We all know what the law means but it says this." Criminals get off and corporations get away with acts that should be and in truth are criminal. It's all spin. Their intent was to deface the property to advertise their product. This is obviously illegal. Is it nessacary to create a new law everytime a new method of breaking the law becomes availible?
But perhaps the state is now going too far
I'm sorry, but did I miss a meeting? Is this now an obligatory inclusion in all articles? Must all articles now declare the state is going too far, our rights are trounced, or privacy is at dire risk?!?
I won't even attempt to argue the rights of property owners, the state's responsiblity to protect property, social mores, etc...
davejenkins.com |
See, I thought this would be about some sort of left-handed version of Grafiti for the Palm OS. Then it would make sense for this to be on /.
If you find this article amusing but was put off by the fact that it was just another ad. Check this out: http://holk.fonky.org/ Someone is putting up custom bird nests all around Stockholm in Sweden... its just CRAZY!
or else the police will get you for "graffiti" :eyeroll:
I live in an island community of about 70,000 people, accessible only by bridge & tunnel. The tunnels leading to and from the island are very old, and the white tile that lines them quickly grows covered in grime and soot. Every month or so a truck comes through and sprays everything down, but the dirt always collects again, seemingly thicker than before.
The local grafitti artists & taggers, some of whom I'm assuming come in from Oakland (the other end of the tunnel) have taken to using squeegees and water to make their signs. They just clean their tag into the wall of the tunnel and presto! It's there, reflecting in shiny white the headlights of passing cars, twice as noticeable as another spray tag we're all used to filtering out.
It's one of the reasons I love living here.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Art is evocative. The best is provocative. Consider that when making judgements on the works of others
** Keep Music Evil **
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
But which is preferable: having them shove their art in your face, or easily and cheaply providing a venue (well, just a big wall really)?
:-)
It's gotta be more effective than cleaning it up, sending the cops out after them, locking them up...
And who knows, a grafitti artist may even become a productive and creative member of society, instead of a drone who got busted for tagging once too often.
Everyone's happy
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Clean up here is meant as "to make the offending graffiti disappear". In other word, by breaking their law and using public property to make illegal advertising, smirnoff [the company] earned the right to make its illegal advertising disappear. Whether that illegal advertising was a grafffiti with ink, or a reverse clean up, or a big 10*5 poster does not matter. They have to make it disappear. As for the "hidden" message that the city is unclean, frankly with or without cleaning graffiti people see that the city is dirty, you are probably the only one thinking that... Random grafiti or clean up in form of ad make it worse. I as a citizen of a big city would rather have unclean wall than clean up ad grafiti. It does not matter that it is a clean up, it is the contrast between the grafitti and the rest of the wall which make it appear like vandalism.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
surely it is only a matter of time before rainfall is similarly targetted by the good guys.
Here in El Paso, Texas, you are taxed for rainfall. I kid you not.
LEELA: Didn't you have ads in the twentieth century?
FRY: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio... and in magazines... and movies, and at ballgames, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written in the sky. But not in dreams, no sirree.
think the USA patriot act is scary, the title of that UK 'ACT' scares the poop out of me.
does that cover
smoking,
dreadlocks
Mohawks
cursing
smelling bad
not kneeling to the police as they pass by
anyone- info about same?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
After all is said and done all you have there is a vodka advertisement in a place where did not use to be a vodka advertisement. And that is just more mind pollution.
It is just another thing that catches your attention, forces you to read it, etc, etc. That is why billboards, for example are considered pollution no matter how clean they are. Its not pollution in the strctest meaning of the word, but it does make the landscape look cheaper and dirtier.
People say "it would just be dirty nevertheless". Well it sucks the city has not cleaned this stuff up, but even if the wall was covered with dirt, it will not be so bad, because it would be unform dirt, that just fades into the background, does not call attention to itself, and thus does not bother people.
And also when you clean some letters into a wall, you are not really doing any cleaning. When someone cleans "wash me" into a dirty car, is the car any cleaner? Not really.
"Not only that, but it reduces the presentability of the neighborhood, reducing property values for everyone.
And it's just selfish, stupid, and ugly."
Harsh, man, harsh.
In deciding whether or not you support people "cleaning" their message onto property that does not belong to them, ask yourself the following question::
How would you like it if representatives of Coke, Smirnoff, Pepsi, etc - kept their eyes open for your dirty vehicles, house windows, and actively posted their messages
i.e. "buy our products, or at least clean up your stuff"
all over your property? Would you say that it is your own damn fault for not keeping your stuff cleaner, or would you protest?
Interested in Canadian Stocks?
How is this funny?
Should people or companies be allowed to clean public areas of their own volition with no special permissions? Yes or no. If no, then fine, we need to get a permit system that allows you permission to clean public spaces. However I very much doubt anyone would seriously support this position.
If people ARE allowed to go out and clean because they want to, or because someone pays them to (which is how it currently is) then you don't really have a right to tell them how. If I clean up a street but do a half assed job, still leaving trash (but not adding any) that's fine. If I go to clean a wall of grafitti, but get tired halfway through and leave the other half, that's fine. If I clean a park of all litter except cigarette buts to make a point, that's also fine.
He's partically cleaning a wall to make it in to an ad. That's fine. He's adding no additonal paint or anything, just cleaning off part of it to make the remainder look like something, that's fine. If this offends you so much, YOU are welcome to go clean the rest of it. Much as he could partially clean it, you may partially or completely clean it.
If the city and the public want these walls protected then they should have removed the grafitti. Trying to say the grafitti, which is adding paint ot the wall and is illegal, is fine, but REMOVING some of that paint ot make an ad is not is stupid. If he's being paid by the city to completely clean the walls, or doing it as required community service, they have a right to bitch. If he's doing it because he wants to, they have no right.
As I said, they, or the public, can clean it ALL up and eliminate the problem. That's what a town I used to live in does. To keep grafitti to a mininimum they clean it up FAST after it happens, like within a day. This deters many vandals, since they know their work will be gone in 24 hours, and they risk being arrested if caught.
There are two kinds of graffiti. I'll call the first one 'artcrime' since I'm not sure what other people call it. The second is tagging.
Artcrime is where someone makes an effort to do something that is interesting or beautiful, or at least puts some love into the work. It may or may not be a tag. If it isn't a tag, then the artist would be fine with using a designated wall like this.
Taggers, on the other hand, just like to put their name on shit for whatever reason - territory marking or some sort of rush that comes from vandalizing things. These folks are not going to bother with a designated wall because using one of those entirely defeats the purpose of the graffiti for them.
So I guess it's not a big problem if the only folks that bother you are the artists. Me, I'm the other way around - I normally don't mind graffiti that's had some love put into it because there was love put into it, whereas tagging is the equivalent of making it known you were somewhere by ejaculating all over the place.
The city has a duty to keep public structures clean. I'm betting it's even in the legal code saying they do (is in most municipalities). If they fail in that duty, it's their problem, not his problem. The solution is painfully simple: keep the buildings (walls, etc) clean like you are supposed to.
I'm guessing they are more mad because what this is REALLY calling attention to is that the city isn't keeping things clean. If one of your friends writes "Wash me" on your dirty car, you aren't mad that they touched your car (if you are I'm supprised you have friends), you are mad that they are calling attention to how dirty you let it get.
Slashdot seems to get additonally up in arms since many people here seem to think you have a right to never see any ads, which also isn't true.
Don't you know that the solvent comes with all sorts of tints these days? Citron, and various berry flavor Vodka is available. There's even pepper vodka. It might be more subtle than the average commercial "art" but the obliteration message will still come through.
I still haven't figured out if I *like* professional graffiti, or if it even helps improve the area ...
Could it be more despicable? Nothing says "slum" like billboards and graffiti. Don't be fooled, it's always degrading and insulting when people stick their message in your face. The difference between a "legitimate" billboard and someone marking their pissing grounds is mostly the means available. In this case, the advertiser is being cheap and hoping to gain some kind of hoodlum credibility. I don't want to live or work around people with that kind of attitude.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
which is where it's usually written, and what was referred to above.
The Crown Prosecution Service says he may have been in breach of last year's Anti-Social Behaviour Act.
This seems to fly in the face of the received Slashdot wisdom that only the US is able to pass such ridiculous acts. I'll have to remember this for the next Slashdot story about some british hacker refusing to attend a US conference for fear of arrest.
from the article
But Leeds City Council insists his work is illegal because any advertiser needs a permit. The Crown Prosecution Service says he may have been in breach of last year's Anti-Social Behaviour Act.
In short, he isn't being targeted for 'defacement' but for using a public space for commercial ends.
Similarly, if I go downtown and try to sell things on the street, even if I cause no disturbance whatsoever, I can still be held accountable for performing a commercial act in a space that I'm not allowed to do so.
It's a shitty kind of law that needlessly restricts freedom. I'd love to have more street vendors selling without the high overhead that the local shops do, provided that they're not too obnoxious. But the local gov was following the law, however stupid that law was. Maybe he could get a liscense to advertise?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
The issue here isn't really one of defacement, but of using something for advertising that isn't yours to begin with. How is this much different from putting up posters on walls?
AccountKiller
Near Calgary, there is (was?) a fertilizer add, 'written' on a slope, causing the grass to grow faster, outlining the name of the company.
Oh well, what the hell...
I've been graffing (its an industry term) for the last 5 years. I never leave my name, so its not really a tag. However I feel that using a designated wall is useless. The point of Graffing to me, at least, is to subject (as infringe on others) the unwary to art. Putting a 3 foot Venus DeMilo on a wall in a grubby factory is a much more fufilling act than putting that same stencil on a wall thats designated for art. Two distinct demographics really.
sig? its spelled syg.
And a large part of the /. population seems to think that we have a right to never see any ads. That if someone places an ad somewhere and you look at it, they violated your rights by making you see it. This is, of course, BS, but it's why this made /. Had this guy been doing artwork, you'd never see it here,
FTA> "The Crown Prosecution Service says he may have been in breach of last year's Anti-Social Behaviour Act."
:-(
Do they have an Institute for Personality Improvement, too?
At the very least, a total inability to choose law names...
If Smirnoff wants to sell more vodka, they could either make it not taste like the cheap shit, or sell it at cheap shit prices. Just a suggestion...
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
I think Giuliani skit on SNL was the best solution. It was a Public Service Announcement claiming that rather than painting over graffiti tags, they would simply stencil "sucks" after the taggers name. For repeat offenders, they would use a professional artist and match the style.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
why the hell is this considered news for nerds? some guy got paid to create advertisements without a permit to do so and got in trouble for it... whoopteefriggindo
don't get me wrong, this is a great subject to discuss, but I can't help deny that I'm surprised to see it on Slashdot. This seems more like a story that would appear on fark.com. (except with a much shorter tag line, and a billion times the stupidity level.)
Sunny Dubey
16mm / Digital Video - 16 minutes - 2001 Experimental Documentary
matt mccormick
Yeah right. It IS graffiti. Pull your heads out of your asses!
It is not cheap!
Perhaps you should ask for more interesting places "designated" for art?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Have you tried the use wet sandpaper at 1200 or higher - ie cut and polish?
The 6a is probably scratched or etched in by something that changed the surface.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Taggers, on the other hand, just like to put their name on shit for whatever reason - territory marking or some sort of rush that comes from vandalizing things.
The description you're looking for is "pissing on fireplugs." That's all it is. Taggers are bladder-challenged dogs with spray cans.
And the most provocative art of all is created when a set of keys is your brush and a car door is the canvas.
Condemning graffiti isn't making an artistic judgment; it's standing up against the malicious defacement of public and private property.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
How did they remove it?
Seems standard practice in the Geek related industries.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
People that seek out art are not my audience, I want to shove art into the faces of those who would not or does not have the time to look at art. Putting my ideas into canvas and hanging them on walls just doesnt do what graffing does. It doesnt show anyone something they arnt expecting.
sig? its spelled syg.
IIRC there was someone in LA/SD a number of years ago that took it upon themselves to remove graffiti from overpasses and etc in the area. The catch was that they used a bright teal paint to cover over the graffiti, so any cleaning they did resulted in a mark even more visible and identifiable than the previous stuff. Government officials were confused.
Perhaps you should ask for more interesting places "designated" for art?
Wouldn't that be like asking all the flashers to do their thing down at a nude beach? Kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
they can come to my house instead, if they'd like. well, half of them can.
the pretty ones or the young ones? or the ones that look like Orlando Bloom in LotR?
sig? its spelled syg.
Giving the kids somewhere to put up, thereby lessening the amount of shitty tagging around the area
By providing workshops for the local youth to learn about and become a part of the four elements, (Graffiti, DJ'ing, Breakdancing, MC'ing), which then breeds respect for the culture and an affinity for your local area and crews.
It's been a pretty big success with the locals and the youth, every workshop we run is booked out almost straight away, and with local government helping with financial aid, we can offer these workshops for free.
And who knows, a grafitti artist may even become a productive and creative member of society, instead of a drone who got busted for tagging once too often.
We recently had an auction of artwork painted in the workshops over the last year and raised quite a lot of money, of which half we are using to plan more workshops, and the remainder we donated to a local charity dealing with drug affected teenagers. I think thats a pretty sweet contribution by a bunch of degenerate vandals :) I did like your joke, though. I'm currently employed full time in IT for the government, and it's an odd feeling to leave a managers meeting, go home, throw on your black hoodie and hit the streets for a couple of hours. If only my boss had any idea what I got up to...
P.S. If anyone has any qustions regarding the programs I'm more than happy to provide you with any info you like, just email me at the above or reply here.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
Yeah, you sound like a typical Logan denizen. Or Inala :-)
And waddya know, I'm a guvmint worker too!
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
See also this campaign to highlight smog and pollution effects, where messages were made by cleaning dirty (not graffitied, just plain old dirty) walls around London.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-Bertrand Russel
I don't want to hear you complain, then, if some owner subjects the unwary "graffer" to the business end of their boot.
You know, spammers use arguments a lot like that. Reaching out to unwilling audiences and all. Even committing crimes in order to do so.
Good company there.
Congrats.
Taggers, on the other hand, just like to put their name on shit for whatever reason - territory marking
You grew up on the rich side of the tracks, didn't you?
Of course it's territory marking.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Redlands, mate. You're out by about 20 mins on the freeway. :P Close though!
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
But if a MINORITY, URBAN kid does the same thing, everyone says "OOOH! Look at the art he made." These lower standards for minority and poor folk are a form of RACISM. Everyone should be held to the same standard.
I agree .... frankly I don't see much difference between kids tagging and dogs marking their territory .... on the other hand an artfull reworking of a billboard or a wonderfully subversive slogan where one least expects it is often a wonder to behold ....
Do you have pictures of your graffiti so we can see if what you're shoving into our faces could be considered art?
What would you say if your neighbor sneaked over and wrote offensive messages in the dirt on your car and your windows, for all to read? The first time, you may think it's a fluke, but after a few times, you'd get angry.
You have property rights to your car, your home, and the dirt that accumulate on it. You have the right to have them free of messages you don't like or approve of, whether painted on or scrawled in dirt. You have a right to have them look as dirty as you like.
Well, it's no different with city property: it's everybody's property that is administered on our behalf by the government. We have decided to keep it dirty, but that doesn't mean individuals can come in and clean it up, in particular, clean it up in a way that promotes businesses that people have not agreed to promote and might not want to promote.
Can I have your home address, so that I can "shove" my ideas onto your private property?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Nice sounding words, but unless you have permision by the owners, all you are doing is damaging the property of others. Using property you did not pay for. It's not art at all, it's just vandalism. It's roughly of the same morals as writing a computer virus.
It's possible to achieve shock and suprise in art through legitimate means. but what your doing is no different if I went to your home while you were gone and peeled out in your yard, t.p.ed your trees and broke your windows. I could claim it was performance art, but somehow I don't think you'd be any happier or less willing to press charges if I were caught.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Well see pictures get you caught, which is the main reason I dont leave my name. So no, I dont. And if I did, It wouldnt be the greatest idea for me to show you. However This [stencilrevolution.com] is the same 3 layer technique that I like to use.
sig? its spelled syg.
I think there's two (or more) parts to the grafitti question/problem.
Firstly, there's the vandalism part. Bad bad bad. Springs from a lack of "canvas", plus a good dollop of bored teenager.
Then there's the creative part. Some of these kids are damn good at what they do.
Then there's the subject, which may be an expression of something close to them in their urban, teenage-angsty way (hehe, jeez, i'm talkin' like an art wanker).
If you can separate the first from the rest, then all is well. Those that continue to vandalise can get The Boot. If you catch someone keying your car or spraying your fence, call the cops, sic your dog, blast with buckshot. I would.
Condemn the vandalism.
FWIW: I haven't sprayed any grafitti anywhere, and I don't have an artistic bone in my body.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
if I went to your home while you were gone and peeled out in your yard, t.p.ed your trees and broke your windows. I could claim it was performance art
So YOU did it. Wait till I get my hands on you, you crazy teen performance artist!
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
"If only my wife was this dirty"
Actually, I rate top-quality graffiti as better art than you'll often find in galleries.
Take Banksy (check the website at http://www.banksy.co.uk/ ) - total vandalistic anti-socialism but at the same time valid social commentary, truely genius artistic vision and inspired execution.
~Cederic is a fan.
Nope, didn't do it, was no where near there and besides your nieghbors with the blue chevy are lying anyway. I'm eslewhere every friday anyway.
Besides that you've miss-guesed my age by 15years min. (yes this sadly says I actualy lived through the disco era of sufficient age to still be traumatized)
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Check out our site/a>.
You're absolutely right that there are two types of graffiti. I live in Barcelona, Spain, a city that is know for it's graffiti.
Here the two types of graffiti are distinctly marked. I love the stuff that you're calling "artcrime" - some of the artists here are superb. And they are nearly always respectful - here it is very common to build temporary walls around building sites, and it is often these that the better artists use to create some create thier work.
Then there are the taggers. These anti-social little bastards spray on everything, usually just scrawling their tags and often just spraying to vandalise. There are lots of beautiful old buildings, fountains and statues here and there is a big effort at the moment to clean the city up. It makes me really mad when an old building has been carefully (and expensively) restored and some little antisocial w*nkers have sprayed their tags all over it.
One good thing - the cleanup teams here carry digital cameras and take photos of all the tags, so when they do finally catch the tossers they have enough evidence for a very serious penalty.
It doesnt show anyone something they arnt expecting.
The people you're speaking of aren't going to see it as art anyways. Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. You simply can't show art to someone who doesn't want to see it. You can show them paint stains that took you hours to carefully render, and they'll treat it with about as much consideration as a mess left by a dog on the sidewalk.
Anyone who _does_ appreciate such art would have appreciated it in a far less invasive forum as well.
Don't delude yourself into thinking you're some kind of feeling man's vingilante. You're just an artist who turned to vandalism because they don't know who their audience is.
Cheers.
Jesus fucking Christ, some guy says he thinks graffiti and eminem suck so it's modded-down by every beanie-wearing dork on /. with points.
I think graffiti is ugly shit too. I'm sick of seeing glorified tags plastered every goddam place I look and excused as being "alternative" or "street art". It's ugly, it's in your face and it's destructive.
I don't hate Eminem but his music isn't everybody's cup of tea. Just because it's your favorite thing doesn't give you the right to accuse a dissenting opinion of being flamebait or trollish. Go work for the Bush administration if you want to be like that!
MOD THE GUY UP TO A '0' AT LEAST! Have some balls for fuck's sake!
Take Banksy
"Banksy" poored tins of coloured paint all over statues outside a lovely building near where I live here in Barcelona. The council have had to spend tens of thousands of tax payers (my!) euros to clean it up.
Inspired execution? Genius artistic vision? Give me a break. The guy is an antisocial wanker.
I would agree when it's some idiot adding a tag somewhere, or defacing a window, vehicle, or otherwise decent premesis. When it's a mural on a dilapitated building with stained ugly walls and nothing remotely appealing in appearance... many forms of graffiti are an improvement, it's the original wall that said "slum."
Not all graffiti is a message, well other than the fact that the message is in the artwork, and it's not always political or controversial.
From living oppsosite the two uni's, typical response from the cocksucker councillers who have just lost their control.
There is so much graffiti this is a refreshing change, shame it has to be for a commercial product though.
It was actually thought to have been a publicity stunt by sometime dance artists The KLF - the same guys that set fire to 1 million UKP on a Scottish island, because they could afford to.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I see at least two types of territory marking in my neighborhood. There's the bored teenager tagging, and there's the gangster tagging.
Maybe the bored teenager tagging is just a wannabee thing, wanting to be big and bad like the gangsters, but I think it's much more about feeling lost in society and needing to scream, "I'm here!"
The gang tagging, on the other hand, is about warfare. Knowledgable cops can read gang tagging and get an idea of who is trying to kill who.
My neighborhood sees very little of the "Art tagging".
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
just because you are a liberal and don't care about other people's property, doesn't mean you can purposely damange another's property.
the point you're missing is that graffiti is creative while spam is not.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
If someone were to deface your website, would you leave it up, even if you didn't like the 'art' of the defacement?
They did that here in the UK in my town. The next step was to get all the schools to give the police photocopies of every single schoolbook that has got any sort of doodles on it. Lo and behold, almost every kid under 18 who had done grafitti had tagged all their schoolbooks and the police were able to tie most tags down to kids by name, and either give them warnings or punishments. The best bit was most actually stopped and grafitti dropped by at least 70%
Warhammer forums
Eh, I didn't say that anything provocative is art.
Nor was I particularly endorsing graffiti. I was more responding to the music comparison, and that the music that is most controversial is often the most profound. Since we're picking on Mr. Mathers, take the song "White America". To many people it can be perceived as an attack and offensive. To others the lyrics are a commentary on a real social phenomenon.
If rap isn't your thing, you'll see similar sentiments in nearly every genre of music, from blues to metal. A true artist is likely to say something that the majority dislikes, this is a good thing.
Otherwise you just end up with a world of happy-happy nonsense music/writing/whatever that lulls the general public into acceptance of groupthink.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Pink and green text is an option if you supply the pickled beetroot and asparagus spears.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
No it's not valid social commentary. It's just vandalism. If he was to paint his message where he had a right to do so, then it might be valid.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
That's clever. What town was it? Is there anything on-line about this? If so I will pass the info on to my local council.
Damnit he's even got a photograph of it on his web site:
http://www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/vandalism.html
Note that the photo only shows a small part of this act of vandalism - the whole of the front of a building was vandalised.
The building was recently cleaned, and the council has put iron railings in front of it to prevent further acts of vandalism like this. Well done Banksy! You're so clever!
Wanker.
Borough of Sutton, London, UK. The 70% figure is a guess from me about the town centre though so dont quote me apart from annecdotal evidence. The same time this happened, there was a large-scale business sponsored continual cleanup as well which got rid of what was there before, and instead of coming back within a few days like normal the combination seemed to crush the spirits of most casual taggers.
Warhammer forums
I don't know. Spammers' circumvention of certain email filters seems pretty creative to me. It's still vandalism, when all is said and done though, just like graffiti.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
When faced with the dirty rear-windscreen of a car, I usually write:
"I wish my girlfriend was this dirty."
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
\/\/.H.0 5EZ 5|P|A|M|M|E|R|S A,R,N'T CRE@T1VE?
(If you can defend graffiti, stop protesting that some "artist" is filling your inbox with an IMPORTANT MESSAGE. They can also claim to be "creative", you know.)
Microsoft Windows is, fittingly, the official Desktop OS of Olig
they can come to my house instead, if they'd like. well, half of them can.
the pretty ones or the young ones? or the ones that look like Orlando Bloom in LotR?
If you think any or all of those groups make up even close to half of people who use nude beaches you are in for a nasty surprise.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
This reminds me of an incident in my home town a while ago. A homeowner with a large front lawn refused to mow it, eventually leading to a really sloppy looking field-type thing. The city couldn't force him to mow, but one night, someone with a mower went out and mowed a swastika in the middle of the yard. Within a week, the lawn was neatly mowed.
and become a part of the four elements, (Graffiti, DJ'ing, Breakdancing, MC'ing), which then breeds respect for the culture ...
mostly of running from the cops, jumping trains and sneaking around with a bag full of cans.
Juvenile culture, yes. Respect for what? "Graffiti, DJ'ing, Breakdancing, MC'ing"? Right. Skills. "Four Elements"...
Sounds like you take yourself too seriously, just like the rest of the bling bling respect lala crew. Have a nice life.
If local councils spent more time and money trying to clean up the streets they wouldn't need to waste time and money prosecuting those who do it for them, albeit they're rather selective about what parts of the surface they clean, but maybe it will help highlight how filthy our surroundings are.
Advertising companys shoudn't be able to hire people to clean their logos or slogans into grime since the dirt and soot shouldn't be allowed to build up to that level in the first place.
What a shit.
Juvenile, heh. You do know it's been around longer than home computing, right? Would you consider the internet to have (or be) it's own subculture? Gamers? Hackers? Anyway, your puerile drivel says a hell of a lot more about you than it does about me. And believe me, I'm having a great life, thanks for your concern!
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
And tagging is nothing more or less than spam.
Maybe a big grafitti can be fine artwork, but scamming is a kind of art too...
There has been a wall of "clean-fiti" in the Broadway tunnel in San Francisco for as long as I can remember.
The objection of the City Council is that drinks companies and others are paying a so called 'artist' to put advertisments when the companies know that they are not allowed to do this.
Readers outside the UK may not be aware that these companies have recently been tackled for their practice of flyposting their adverts on every flat surface they can find and this is their latest attempt to get around restrictions on where advertising can be put.
Therefore the real issue is not whether preventing someone being paid to put advertising slogans on walls is a restriction on 'artistic freedom'. The real issue is should big corporations be able to plaster their slogans on your wall in defiance of local ordinances?
Does it disturb anyone else that Smirnoff is doing this to reach the "teenage market"?
09
yhbt
Previous Slashdot comment
This isn't clever or funny. I live in Hackney which is London inner-city. We are plagued by illegal posters and now this. It's pollution by advertising from corporations that would not dare do this is smart parts of town.
Camden (another inner city burough) has just taken out antisocial behaviour orders on Sony for illegal posters (flyposting). It's the same kind of activity and different medium.
I personally hope that Smirnoff are roasted for this.
I think the reverse dirt art idea is great, but in this case I am on the side of the "no votes". He used his new art form to put up free spam/advertisements.....and.....for liquor companies.
The guy who inspired the first graffiti writers was Taki 183, back in 69 or 70. He was just a tagger. The first writers were taggers.
It took people like Phase 2 and Dondi to move it to what was indisputably art, and the creation of [master]pieces. But almost all the early wrtiers were taggers as well; I don't know how true that is today.
Check out the "Style Wars" DVD for the full background, if you want to understand how and why it started. It will also clue you a little bit in on why BBoying (which some people call "Breakdancing") is so important to hip hop culture, and why most artists claiming to do hip hop today are really just rapping.
Rant over.
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
Five-second summary: Flyposting (sticking up posters wherever you damn well want to) is illegal. A couple of big music labels, members of the law-abiding, non-criminal music industry, preferred illegal flyposting to buying poster space for their acts (as it saved them money). One central London council said, "That's anti-social: if you do it again, the marketing people behind the campaigns will be jailed for up to five years." So Sony stopped flyposting. BMG haven't, yet (apparently there was a hitch re: naming the right anti-social individuals at the company). But this all seems to be a Good Thing to me.
Something similar was done at Georgia Tech to the statue of Heisman.
Some studious student took bronze polish to the old statue, giving the man a nice shiny bikini.
Technically, they didn't damage the stature, just polished it selectively.
Eventually, Tech put some brown stuff over the bikini lines, but you can still see the outline of his previous selection if you look real close.
"Fundamentalist Christian fanatics" believe:
No one can be forced to convert to Christianity (though in the past, sadly, some appeared to be trying).
The USA, a nation founded on the very principles of Biblical Christianity, is being destroyed by... Christians?
Christians say the Bible advocates slavery for anyone?
What part of "love your neighbor as yourself" (especially when a 'neighbor' is any other human) appears to be hateful?
Methinks you are in terrible need of a fact-check. BTW, this whole segment is terribly off-topic.
Don't get me wrong, I adore good graffiti, but I've never thought of it as an "industry." Doesn't that sorta go against the whole independant counter-culture (or pseudo-counter-culture) idea? Industries tend to be regulated, which would be both a good and a terrible thing for graffiti.
The idea of desiginated walls for graffiti is a good one, and I have seen some which have some nice pieces in that past. I also enjoy some of the stuff I see in the wild. I think a lot of the problem is that there are places where the owner of the property doesn't really care if you paint up their wall, and there are places where it is clearly unacceptable to do so.
For example, I don't have trouble with stuff I see painted on temporary walls around construction sites, or on top of those endless rows of exactly the same ad. By the same token, I beleive it's totally out of line when someone hits the side of a mom-n-pop grocery store, or a street sign.
I suspect you're not the kind of "graffer" who would do that, but just like the whole "hacker" vs. "cracker" thing, the few dumbasses out there are the most visable, and give the whole medium a bad name.
I haven't read the entire thread, so I don't know if it's been mentioned already, but a good friend of mine was annoyed at some unsightly graffiti near his home so called the council to ask about having it removed. Not top priority for the council, so he offered to remove it himself. He was told if he removed the graffiti himself he would be prosecuted for criminal damage to council property!
The Fundamentalist Christian Fanatics being referred to are the 'Christian Reconstructivists', look them up on Google. These are 'Old Testament' loving folks that would bring 'Biblical Law' to a scary Taliban in the US level.
...the Bill of Rights? ...the Declaration of Independence? Oh that's right, neither is mentioned, just some stuff about a creator, which could be any religion that believes in a higher power.
These Christian Reconstructionists do preach a Christian 'Take-over' of the world. They believe that they are at war with everyone that isn't with them. They believe that until they can build the Kingdom of God on Earth that there will be no second coming. They believe this, they preach this and they will do everything they can to obtain this.
As for this country being based on Bliblical Christianity, where is the Christian Bible and where is Jesus mentioned in the Constitution?
Even being unable to locate all of that, what about the part stating that a religious test is NEVER to be applied for someone seeking or winning a public office? If this nation was truly a 'Christian based' or 'Bible based' society, then anyone and everyone seeking or holding public office would have to pass a religious test of some sort.
The 'Old Testament' does advocate that, in just about every portion referring to a war being waged. Have you ever read the 'Old Testament'? You should, it is a very scary book. It is filled with some of those most racist and scary nationalistic beliefs that you can possibly imagine. It has been used as justification for acts the world has seen far to many times.
"Love your neighbor as yourself"? Well, isn't that easier if your neighbor is exactly like you? Can't that be read as your neighbor must be just like you, since you love yourself enough to let Jesus into your heart, your neighbor better love themselves just as much, or else! That isn't 'Old Testament' and that isn't so much of a problem.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
graffiti is like weeds somthing a person dosn't want . if somone wants Dandelions in their garden then it is no longer a weed. I don't mind graffiti so it's not atually graffiti to me. Now a big red fiberclass M with a stutpid glown next to it is.
Here's a little chronology of New York City Subway graffiti. It hasn't been maintained for awhile so there are some borken links but you get the idea... you can see the 'Development of Style' from the 1972 rudimentary to the mid 1980s.
They didn't have to clean it up at all let alone spend "tens of thousands of tax payers euros" in the process. Why couldn't they just leave it as it was? And if they must clean it up, I fail to see how they can justify spending that kind of money on it. I could have cleaned that statue up in a couple of days. Give me a couple of hundred euros for a job well done and everyone's happy.
You pay some big guy, so the little guys don't bother your business. The downside is, you still have to live with the 'lion piss' and the nigger-look it creates.
That's why they should all be lethally gassed.
Please, let's have a little nuance, people.... Except for the spammers, who can be fired out the blowhole of history for all that I care.
The random-word association I get in my spam would make people who wear black berets and drink very small cups of coffee cry with shame. Some of it is fantastic. Of course, it's just randomly generated, but who am I to decide whats art anyway.
They didn't have to clean it up at all
s m/ vandalism.jpg
No? Here's a picture of part of the vandalism, from Banksy's own web site:
http://www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/images/vandali
They didn't have to clear it up, you say? You think it looks good, do you? Something the people of the city of Barcelona should be proud of?
I fail to see how they can justify spending that kind of money on it.
Did you see it? It was the whole of the facade of a listed building - not just all the statues and stonework but the woodwork of the door as well.
Give me a couple of hundred euros for a job well done and everyone's happy.
You have no idea, do you? If you think it is a job that could be done by one person in a couple of days then you're a fool.
speaking from the point of view of a writer (graf artist) graffiti is only graffiti if it is illegal. legal walls can be pretty, and some of the multicolor peices are pretty for you to look at, but quite simply, graffiti is for other writers. that is why often you cannot read it. that is why tagging is just as important as piecing. granted, much of the graffiti you have seen is done by toys who thought it would be fun, but anything worth looking at is well placed and done by good writers.
Hehe, yeah, I too hate it when people do that.
Falling on your ass because you slipped on somebody else's seminal fluid is about as bad as it gets, imo.
My other UID is 1337
for the most part, i like banksy's work. his stencils are fantastic. he has done some stuff i don't like all that much. most of it is great. www.banksy.co.uk
Considering that situation, what if due to some weird meteorological phenomenon the rain washes away a pattern that looks like a swastika or some other inappropriate image? Are you going to call nature a racist and a vandal?
At least with clean graffiti it's easy to get rid of the image by cleaning the rest of the wall... something that should have been done in the first place.
for the most part, i like banksy's work.
I am not criticising his "art" - a lot of it is very clever and powerful. However, what I do really object to is the way he feels to need to do it on property and locations he doesn't own. A lot of it would be just as clever and powerful if it was in the form of posters, or if he used water-based paints that could be washed off, or if he got the permission of the building owners before doing it.
But he is deliberately destructive. He was said himself that he has experimented with using acid to etch stuff into limestone buildings so that they could never be removed. That kind of behaviour is extremely irresponsible in my view, and from that perspective, he is a complete wanker.
Funny you should say that Saw this one just the other day..
I don't understand why only certain people should be able to ruin my view, and on the whole I'd rather have some sort of art instead of an ad.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Why are you so arrogant to believe that your idea of art is good enough to thrust into the faces of people who don't ask for it?
Do you really believe that you know better about what other people should look at than they do?
My favorite grafitti[o]?
"I only wish my wife were this dirty..."
The images on that site are certainly interesting and some of them were obviously done by people with real talent.
Let's say you put your work on a building and somehow the owner finds out who did it. If it turned out he liked it and wanted you to do more on his buildings, would you?
You might have thought you were clever having moved the litter...but you're really just a leech. Instead of moving that trash to where it belonged, you moved it somewhere else and cried when you didn't get a cookie. Deal with the common connoctations of the word 'art' and you might get a bit farther in life.
Blar.
By way of introduction, I pay attention to at a lot of grafitti and know several taggers.
> There are two kinds of graffiti. I'll call the
> first one 'artcrime' since I'm not sure what
> other people call it. The second is tagging.
You're trying to made a hard and fast distinction between something that's purely aesthetic. It just ain't so easy.
Compare your argument to: "I call it 'hip hop' if it's socially conscious. I call it 'rap' if it's all 'cash-money-hoes'." Things that fall in the first category nonetheless can be terrible. And things that fall in the second category can nonetheless be inspired.
And to reply to someone else's argument:
> Nice sounding words, but unless you have permision
> by the owners, all you are doing is damaging the
> property of others. Using property you did not pay
> for. It's not art at all, it's just vandalism.
Okay, this is just crap. Just becase something is illegal, anti-social, and bears no respect for property rights doesn't mean it can't be art. I suggest you check out John Oswald's Plunderphonics album, which he composed solely out of misappropriated samples. (e.g. The Beatles, Michael Jackson, &tc.)
FWIW, most of the taggers I know just don't give a fuck. Indeed, they relish in the subversive aspect of the activity.
Now, the question of whether it's "good" or not is an entirely different matter, and one that cannot be easily answered based upon a simple definition or trivial distinction.
I've got a great idea for an art project, why don't I pour paint over your car! Don't worry, I'll tape up the windows and door seals so that you can use the car, then I'll add a picture of it on my website, I'm sure that you'll take great pride riding in and paying for, the work of a artist as important as myself. In fact , I am so sure that you'll just love it, I won't even ask, it should be done by the time you see your car next.
The correction that's needed is a "that". He meant to write "unless it's use of ... that confused you".
- Wasn't the whole problem that this guy was using this technique to market vodka? Shouldn't this guy be gassed, then?
- Okay, any activity that involves someone selling something is evil? I like TV ads, a hell of a lot better than I would probably enjoy some antisocial anarchists taking over the TV station and broadcasting videos of themselves jumping around to bad music.
Keep in mind, I really love nice graffiti, and I think it should be allowed on public, unadorned property -- such as the underside of bridges, trains, along freeways and anywhere else where otherwise you'd just see wide swaths of blank concrete. But I'm against just using a privately owned, occupied building. At that point, you're infringing on the owner's expression (i.e., I like brick walls, so I don't paint my house. I like purple, so I paint my house purple). Personally, if I ever own a wharehouse sized building, I will invite people to come and put whatever kind of mural they want on the side, so long as it's not offensive or mean-spirited. And guess what? If someone comes by and tags that wall or paints over it, yes, I will be pissed off.So I guess I like controlled graffiti, just like I like people following all the other damn laws we have around.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
As ugly, and often offensive as billboards are, the simple fact is that someone paid for their message. If your favorite charity or local business spend a few thousand on a billboard and it got defaced, it would be a blow because the entity lost money. Just because the billboard happens to be for Viagra (or some other massively corporate thing), doesn't really change things. It's sorta like saying it's okay to shoplift from WalMart because it's not hurting anyone.
The only time I agree with defacing signs is those hidious illegal signs which spring up on telephone polls and at intersections lately. ("Need Money Quick? Call 555-1212", "LA Weight Loss, Call 555-1212", and my favorite "Want signs like these? Call 555-1212") These signs aren't legal, and I think are fair game for whatever...
I remember writing all kinds of great stuff on concrete with a cheap pressure washer when I was a kid. It didn't fade for weeks either, and that was just water out of a hose.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
And don't be surprised when someone shoves your face in a pile of shit - if I catch someone marking something I own, I won't call the cops... Unless it's the same crew that arrested Michael Stewart
Whether it be ads for a product or reminders of how cool disco dan is, they are advertisements all the same.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I fucking hate you criminals so bad. I hope you do time.
Operation TIPS alive and well in Virginia
I've never claimed it looked good. I was simply pointing out that nobody forced the council to spend any money at all. That they chose to spend thousands on the task tells me more about your councillers than anything else.
"If you think it is a job that could be done by one person in a couple of days then you're a fool."
Go learn how to read and comprehend English you deigo twat
Hehe, yeah that is funny.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
I've been "fucking" (it's an industry term) for the last 5 years. I never leave my name, so its not really a tag. However I feel that using a girlfriend or hooker is useless. The point of fucking to me, at least, is to subject (as infringe on others) the unwary to sex. Grabbing some unsuspecting Venus DeMilo coming home from work and doing her on the floor in a grubby factory is a much more fufilling act than using that same position on a person that's designated that they want it. Two distinct acts really.
Brent Council (North West London) has also started a flyposting campaign of its own. They have stuck small signs up on street lights. Its says "earn big bucks" "work from home" etc etc - you get the message. Then close up it says "cracking down on benefit fraud !". So they complain about flyposting and then do it themselves !.
So if someone did that to your house, you would just leave it like that?
You must be an antisocial pig.
"Go learn how to read and comprehend English you deigo twat"
Apparently so...
I lend what nonexistant shreds of credibility I have to you as I say "well spoken."
-
StupidKatz
I'm in the middle of a project to read the entire Bible from cover-to-cover; already finished the New Testament, and am now somewhere in the OT. (heh) The Old Testament is a historical record more than anything else. Yes, the Israelites were commanded to do a great many things that seem very barbaric to us now. I won't go in-depth as to why, but it happened.
;) Jesus is the only way (now) that humans can establish a relationship with God, and he summed up all the OT into two things: love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. A 'neighbor' is any human you meet.
The New Testament, however, is (among other things) the aftermath of Jesus Christ fulfilling the prophesies of the Old Testament. In other words, if someone tries to be a "christian" via the Old Testament, they are doomed. There is no salvation to be found in the Old Testament, just temporary coverings and the like.
The law (OT) is not there to help people get to God - it's there to demonstrate how humans FAIL IT.
Much of this is made clear when actually *studying* the Bible, rather than just browsing through it.
So does your Mom. And none too badly I must say!
LOL!
Well kind of, but I was thinking more along the lines of A) Be sure you have some talent and plan a whole big, decent mural, and then B) Go to the owner of said grungy factory and tell them about your plan, perhaps they'll pay you to throw down a whole wall inside.
I know if I ever open the club I'd like to someday (yea, keep dreaming, like I'll ever get money together for that) I'd like to hire some graffiti artists from all over and fly them in to do sections of the walls. DAIM is a good example of what I'd be looking for.
I guess my real point isn't that I dislike graffiti, or don't approve of it being done (and done well, none of that "tagging" territory marking crap) in public places where it shouldn't be, but I think it would become more accepted if it was done with permission, in the location of your choosing.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Imagine my suprise when I found some twit in the process of painting my garage doors. Previously a boring shade of forest green, they bore a partailly complete image of an improbably-proportioned couple. The artist was not happy to see me. Surprisingly, when I asked him to come in and sit down while we waited for the police I was treated to a most interesting lecture.
It turns out that I was oppressing him, and infringing on his first-ammendment rights to free speech. By having a large, blandly-colored panel on my property, I was advocating complacency and submission to the polical authorities (or something like that). It turns out, he was a freedom fighter, a true patriot, striving to liberate the world. I was the brain-dead corporate slave. The fact that I didn't like his art work was irrelevant.
Anyway, officer friendly arrived, and scolded me for toting a gun (I'd never actually pointed it at the artist, nor did he have any extra holes in his caracass), and escorted him off to whatever minor hand-slap awaited him. Too bad -- he was really a good artist, if he'd have let me have some say in the subject matter, I'd have hired him to paint my garage door.
I think graffers need to be aware that not EVERYONE shares their sense of aesthetics, and that painting other people's property, even if you ARE talented, requires their permission.
P.S. Neither the graffer, nor the police offered to repaint my garage door. Since the image was not suitable for children I got to take the day off work and repaint, at my expense.
...do you have a Bill of Rights in the UK or not?
Um, no it's not "roughly the same morals as writing a computer virus". Seriously, would you care to explain how writing malicious code that affects millions upon millions of people is similar to some kid painting on the side of a building?
"Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space..."
Couldn't it be both art and vandalism?
Also, what is the status of your argument about the property of others when the property is being wasted or otherwise ignored, such as vacant lots and abandoned factories that are still "owned" by someone.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
How do you know it was "Banksy"?
This reminds me of the prank wherein you draw something on a lawn in fertilizer. Later, after the grass has had a chance to "color up", the colorful words or pictures show up.
-DeeT
fghit entyrop
M
because he signed it and has a photograph of it on his web site??
Ok, so you are from Montana, what city was the garage painting incident? Did you have a home owners association? Did you try to persue damages?
sooo, you are right because????
i'm not sure what planet you are from, but the planet i'm from is littered with romanesque statue's reminiscent of patriarchal societies who would prefer other people's woman as slaves than as statues. it always seems its only the ones who get the rich guys off that make it to the granite...
the empire-building aside, they still left statues all over. however, i've never seen one like that picture on banksy's website. maybe you have. maybe thats the art you were making as a kid. maybe you are the one who first defined what art is, and it just so happens that i'm confused because i missed that day of school.
if i had a signature it would say judge not lest you be judged yourself.
or something similar...
sooo, you are right because????
He vandalised something he doesn't own. If you can't understand why that is wrong then can you please tell me where you live because I'll enjoy throwing paint all over your stuff, and you won't be bothered, right?
"Also, what is the status of your argument about the property of others when the property is being wasted or otherwise ignored, such as vacant lots and abandoned factories that are still "owned" by someone."
Ok, so its vacant, now isn't it going to be even harder to sell a vacant building thats got crap painted all over it?
Flashers aren't touching me or my property, as good or bad as that may be. Bad analogy.
both are often acts by self-inflated egos who want merely to show off their skills, without realizing (or caring) about the effect it has on others.
When I think of taggers, I am reminded of feral animals who use urine to mark their turf. Instead of urine, taggers use paint, but it is the same type of activity, namely using paint to "mark their turf". The property they are tagging does not belong to them. If it did, there would not be an issue.
For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.
The analogy has to do with motivation. Some graffiti is done because of the thrill of spray painting where you know you shouldn't. In that case, providing an area which is okay to spray paint doesn't help as the fundamental motivation isn't satisfied.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Taggers = representing their gangs. 'Artcrime' if you want to call it that, are supposed to make works that are more open to interpretation. You can't really make much of a tag. Just a guy saying he holds that territory, not much else.
Also there's not much aesthetic effort to tagging. Tagging is to chicken scratch as Artcrime is to embellished calligraphy. The big problem is the general public unable to discern tagging from true street art. I've seen some interesting wall art on a pizza shop close by, had this cool Roman warrior on it, and before that was around, it was an aerosol-painted ad of Powerade. Powerade! Just to show that some people are generous enough to put plugs on different products. No one should complain about graffiti if it's commercial.
just because you are a conservative and don't care what the parent post was about (i.s. using drugs), doesn't mean you can change the subject by adding on your own personal political agenda.
More importantly, my garage is full of everything EXCEPT my car. I had a choice of leaving the door up, and advertising several thousand dollars worth of woodworking equipment and some high-end bicycles to the world, or closing it and exposing some well-done but sexually explicit artwork to a pretty conservative neighborhood. I didn't want to take the time to fight the insurance company to hire somebody to do the work (which they probably would have done), so I just took the day off and did it myself.
I mentioned the expense in the original post not because it was a terrible hardship, but because ultimately the cost of the artist's effort was passed on to me, which I thought was a bit unfair (a bit like SPAM).
Anyway, no real damage done. ;-)
It's okay for you to not understand the differences between the two; you are ignorant. I have a hunch you live in some droll suburb and are occasionally subjected to the whims of the ignorant youth that you breed in those farms. Where you see REAL graf is in the city: on freight trains, on dilapidated buildings, on obnoxious billboards, on crumbling underpasses. Now I know how you would love to sit and appreciate the decaying beauty of an old building, but that same building, in the same environment, with a mural making an intelligent statement is much more aesthetically pleasing.
Hell, freight trains and dilapidated buildings aren't even allowed to exist in the protected, propaganda rife suburbs that the majority of middle-class white americans live in. They have Zoning laws to keep out the "undesireables". Allow some counter-propaganda in for Christsakes.
Computer viruses do nothing to increase the beauty of your computer; graf DOES blend in with its environment AND convey social commentary and/or intellectual ideas.
I suggest that if you don't want ignorant/irresponsible kids "Peeling out in your yard and T.P.ing your trees" you should spend some money or social programs to bring GOOD ideas to children both rich and poor. And maybe do something with your children other than watching TV.
(\(\
(^.^) INFECTED
(")")
They are paying money to harm me, and I don't care if they get their money's worth.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Using a key to gouge expletives on another's vehicle is a sign of trust and friendship.
-Inignot
If I was your next door neighbor, and stood in my front yard making faces at you, you don't have the legal right (no matter how tempting) to come over an punch me in the mouth.
By the same token, the locations, size, and content of billboards is legally governed. If someone puts one up in my front yard, they're gonna have serious legal problems. But I'd work through the legal system.
I'd love to see billboards illegal everywhere. (In fact, the city I live in therorically is trying to accomplish that) The sad truth is that the majority of citizens have allowed it to be legal to post billboards in certain locations, and while I object, I have to respect that. Just as I expect the other citizens to follow the law and not loot and burn my house while I'm at work.
If you disagree with a law, get it changed. I'd gladly help you.
Btw good question.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
you're really just a leech [...] Deal with the common connoctations
That's not even a word.
You can't take the sky from me...
Just to get the view of someone on the front lines of fighting back against this stuff, my summer job this year is with Graffiti Removal for a major city in Canada (that's all I'm willing to disclose). There are a few different crews which either do pressure washing, soda blasting (yes, baking soda), painting or paint spraying. I do pressure washing.
So far this summer, I have seen one honestly cool tag, well actually, it's art. It's about 12-15m long by 3m high. On the right there's Bin Laden with the crosshairs of a sniper scope on his forehead, on the left there's the twin towers with smoke coming out of one and a plane about to hit the other, above that there's a quote from Mr. George W. himself. There's the nicknames of the four guys who painted it placed off to the side, but unfortunately it looks like some other guy tagged on top of it, but not over top of anything important or cool, just in a part of the sky that had nothing in it. It's all multicoloured with a deep red sky and, well, it's pretty damn awesome. It's so awesome in fact, that the owner of the building doesn't want us to remove it because he likes it too. It's too bad more people can't see it because it's behind the building on private property and there's no lane behind the building, so you have to get out and walk around to see it.
Other than that cool tag, the rest are all just the little asshole punks putting their illegible names all over shit. We have tons of different ways of removing it but it always comes back. If they tag buildings though, the removal process (in my case pressure washing with baking soda) actually in some cases removes a small layer of the surface of the building, like say stucco walls or wooden fences. There's really no other way to remove it because it soaks in and gets "roots" as I like to say, but you deteriorate the surface. The mortar between bricks and even the bricks themselves get worn away over time by my equipment or even worse by the soda blaster, which is a 4000+ psi tow-behind compressor blasting baking soda and a tiny bit of water to keep the dust down. Some buildings that we repeatedly clean are starting to actually to have loose bricks or bricks worn 1-2" deeper than the original surface, which isn't the cheapest thing to start repairing.
I find it funny that these punks go to the store and spend their own money to buy a bunch of paint when I get paid quite well (by their parents' tax dollars no less) to drive around in a big ass pig of a truck and remove it if I feel like it.
wait, don't you write "toy 167?" jackass - it's not an industry
Dude! Wow! Cheers! Awesome!
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
I've actually made a small zine out of it, and it sold rather well from what I hear from the two local record stores to which I gave them. go figure.
sig? its spelled syg.
"Creative" is subjective.
But better yet - yeehaw, the ends justify the means.
Try again.
<grrr>
Thus roughly, though actually a non-replicating form of malware would be a better analogy.
I make the rough equality thusly. He is on the pure basis of his own infantile ego causing often expensive, time-comsuming to fix, damage to someone elses property, without thier permission.
While a virus or worm may spread it's damage making it somewhat worse.
Here's a simplified form, I put code on your system without your permision that does things you don't want and, untill fixed, reduce the utility and value of your system.
Or I cover your property in paints and other crap without your permision, lowering your property value, anoying your neighbors, and possibly offending you untill you pay to have it fixed and cleaned up.
I do eigther to aggrandize my own ego and show how cool/1337 I am.
I recognize many here may place a higher personal value on thier computer systems than say thier car or home, I tend that way myself, but on a pure moral basis the distinction is minimal once you remove the self-propagating nature of some malware. And a single instance of mal-ware is usually less expensive to fix than vandalism.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
check out this dude - he's all artcrimey :)
So was Hitler a great artist? His performance on the world stage was quite provocative.
It's a reference to "The Wizard of Oz". In the case of I-495 outside Washington, there's a spot in the road where the Mormon Temple becomes visible above the trees, and it's reminiscent of the Emerald Palace from the movie. I think it even has a green tinge to it when it's lit up at night.
Right around this point in the interstate, there's a few bridges that cross over the road. Someone managed to spraypaint "SURRENDER DOROTHY" onto one of them in very large letters (and this was probably not an easy feat). I think it was there for years. Someone has since painted over the letters, but since they painted over only the letters you can still sort of make out what it used to say.
A picture should make it clearer: you come around a corner on the interstate and suddently see this. scene. I think the graffiti bridge is right after the one in the second picture.