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Statistical Analysis of U of Chicago Graffiti
quaith writes "Quinn Dombrowski, a member of the University of Chicago's central IT staff, has been recording the graffiti left in the Joseph Regenstein Library Since September 2007. To date she has photographed and transcribed over 620 pieces of graffiti; over 410 of them are datable to within a week of their creation. She has now published in Inkling Magazine a statistical analysis of the entire graffiti collection covering such subjects as love, hate, despair, sex, anatomy, and temporal fluctuations of each of these. After November, both love and despair graffiti drop off significantly until spring, while sex graffiti reaches its one and only peak in December before declining for the rest of the school year. The story includes links to all of the original graffiti photos, which the researcher has made freely available to use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license."
It's still illegal and often makes local people unhappy.
I know there's banksy but he's one in a billion.
Smile, don't click...
Could this all be just one guy who just hasn't found slashdot yet?
I must say there is a good amount of documentation. Now I know that I am more likely to come across a happy smile face than a sad face.
Who is this researcher to relicense their works of art? Just because they can't complain!
They're thinking, they're feeling. And they want you to know. That's why they paint it on walls, cliffs and carve it into the school benches. There's this school of thought that believes that it will go away if nobody reads it. But they've really never done something, stood a few feet away and sighed about getting it off your head. Ignoring it and waiting for it to go away is dumb.
Keeping tabs on the expression gives you a much more clear indication of what the pulse of the otherwise silent are thinking. This is a fun experiment because nobody wall painting is doing it because they want to be part of a statistic ... unlike a girl with a clipboard asking questions.
I remember being in a train in melbourne, riding past a few walls full of legal graffiti (union lane?) and wondering what the line between art and vandalism really was.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
When the library at the local community college had a wooden tables in the study area, there was a rich history of graffiti from 20 years of students studying for exams. When they build a new library with modern non-wood tables, the graffiti no longer existed. The florescent pen graffiti on the condom machines in the restrooms was a poor substitute.
We also have some brilliant graffiti in the grout between the tiles in the downstairs bathroom in the Bartlett dining commons. For example,
"I'm a celebrity, get me grout of here!"
"Commutator subgrout of prime order"
"I'm on the groutside looking in"
"What's this all agrout?"
I doubt any widely-relevant conclusions at all can be drawn from this analysis. It is somewhat interesting, but the hundreds of samples (which is not really that many) are probably created by a mere handful of individuals, most all of whom belong to a particular group - male undergraduate students, 18-24, residing in or near a certain Chicago neighborhood. So certainly there is no way to apply any findings to any larger group. A fun exercise for statistics nerds, perhaps, but of little scientific value.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
But a sample of 620 pieces over three years isn't large enough for useful analysis. I'd like to see this concept applied to graffiti large cities. I'm sure there are crews responsible for removing the graffiti that could document it in the process.
Holy fuck, that shit is fucking awesome! Well done, Quinn!
I was going to post some ASCII graffiti here, but couldn't because of the lameness/whitespace filter, so I posted my graffiti comment on inklingmagazine.com.
Maybe she should come back in 10 years or so, when there's a reasonable body of data. Then there'd be the start of something worth publishing.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Only a fool would damage a library.
I remember when I was younger in school, checking the Merck index and I would find certain pages related to drug precursors were not in the books I ordered for viewing. I asked the librarians if they had been censored and the librarians assured they had not. They didn't know about it, it didn't affect my research as an "academic", whatever that is, I feel that destroying books of any kind is surly a slight against all of modern civilization. Only a barbarian would damage a book, regardless of their motive, be it for profit or otherwise. Damaging a library isn't any better.
This may be the BEST counterargument ever to "all information should be free". Bravo!
However, while I genuinely want to mod you up, I do believe that CURRENT laws to control information are stupid. Similar to how laws can sometimes be unfairly and maliciously used to allow known murderers to remain innocent and walk freely, many patents and copyrights are unfairly and maliciously used to prevent people from contributing to the greater good of humanity. Patents in particular are a minefield -- something's clearly wrong with a system that encourages trolls to cripple the true innovators.
Back to the topic, I believe what the researcher did, copyrighting her photographs, is all right, regardless of whether she released it under Creative Commons. I don't believe she was copyrighting the actual message on the graffiti anyway, just the expression of it on photograph. (Of course properly the copyright should be attributed to both HER and whoever made the graffiti, but then I would suppose THAT's public domain since the original author didn't stake a claim to it...)
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
because they are illegal!"
I don't consider your comment insightful.
I don't agree.
From a judicial POV some act may be vandalism / destructive act to property without the owner agreeing.
From an artistic POV the same act may still be art.
Of course "doing art" so someones property without agreement is a problem.
However, the "lines" are not so easily spotted: What about chalking on the pavement or laser-projections on a publicly owned building?
"and the false need of some people, to control that information."
What a load of reactionary BS. People control information for a number of reasons but copyright is there so the people who created the work - you know , the ones who spent months or years creating a piece of music or a book (surprise! They don't just magic themselves into existence!) - can earn some money from their efforts before ungrateful and clueless morons like you think you're entitled to it for free just because you can copy it easily.
Grow up!
Just wanted to throw out that technically she's violating the copyright of the graffiti owner, and cannot be distributing that work. I think all the graffiti authors should step forward and claim their share of her enormous royalties. If you are a graffiti writer, please click [this is a joke] to claim your giant prize.
This is my sig.
I think regardless of where you find it or what type of person are, graffiti is pretty entertaining and intriguing. I think the most amusing graffiti I've seen that encompasses about every walk of life, rank or status and is among the same topic fairing FTFA above was in a Port-a-john during different points in my life, most notably when I was deployed in Iraq. Considering the type of foot traffic that hit these port-a-john's is much more broader than the foot traffic that hits a university library and the fact that, at least when I was in basic training, it was a push-up affair every time you didn't have a black ballpoint pen on your person, the odds were pretty high for someone to carve their opinion in any artistic form into the wall for everyone else to ponder AND respond to.
It's almost a comical affair now to realize I used to go out of my way to keep track of all the "Black Ninja Rule Number n" and actually look for them when I was pouring sweat trying to take a crap or try to unbuckle 50lbs worth of gear and stow it beside me with I pissed in those crackjack boxes.
Someone defaced one of his paintings recently. It's the one near College Green (Bristol) that is a window on the side of a house with a guy hanging on the window ledge.
It's still illegal and often makes local people unhappy.
I think that meets the criteria of a terrorist action. Let's have a Senate committee start a federal task force to data mine SWIFT data for possible suspects.
Its not past tense much as you'd like it otherwise.
So the article says that there are virtually no pictures of Vajayjays in the graffiti, I find this odd. As somebody who spends a good deal of time working on construction sites and has seen a great deal of stuff on the walls. I definitely see more pictures referring to female genitals than male.
Can anybody else corroborate?
Also on a side note perhaps one of the best was a drawing of a bear and a tree stump asking of bears $hit in the woods. Seen any others of interest?
You don't solve crime by ignoring it.
Who is Davin Reed?
Something similar was done almost 30 years ago.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You really, really, really need to get a life! You've got nothing better to do on a Saturday night than photography graffiti?!? That sad... really sad. Perhaps you should consider changing your name to something more appealing, e.g. "Tiffany Minx". That might make it easier for you to get a date, so you wouldn't need to continue to sublimate your unmet desires by documenting the musings of sexually frustrated males, while simultaneously wondering why none of them are desperate enough to actually ask you out...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Is this considered trendy ? Of scientific merit ? How much money went into this nonsense ?? We still don't have cures for the worst of our ills but we'll study pot modern cave paintings ?
End of Line.
Someone is seriously doing this as research?
.
.
.
It's like XKCD just happened in real life.
Wait.
What?
http://xkcd.com/
http://www.inklingmagazine.com/articles/the-calculus-of-saying-i-love-you/
Yes, authors don't have to claim copyright in order to have it. But for all practical purposes, no person CAN claim copyright on these works. Even taking into account the anonymous works provisions of copyright, it is the burden of the supposed authors to claim that the work is theirs. (And as it stands, it's an uphill battle to prove it.)
And until then, the researchers are NOT in violation until the (proven) rightful owners claim that they are. Presumed innocence. :)
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
...as do I about the publication, without permission, of my quatrain dirge about my disappointment after lengthy preparations were made for evacuation and then, horribly and tragically, I was only able to produce flatus.
Happily though, Michael Bay has a two picture option on it.
"However, a close examination of context shows that the sexual usage of these terms amounts to a mere 19% for fuck, 22% for suck, and 20% for ass(hole)." This is the most exciting scientific statement I've ever read.