I spent last year studying abroad in Grenoble, France, and became interested in these little guys when i noticed them starting to crop up around the city there. Apparently there's only one tile one in Grenoble, but there are many more that are spraypainted. I started noticing them in other cities, too, and for a while I really thought they were some sort of city beautification project. The tile ones, especially, are very well done.
Inferring from space-invaders.com, this phenomenon is pushed mostly by a couple of French kids. I think they either live in Montpellier (in the south of France) or in Paris, because that's where I saw the most tile invaders, and those two cities are the most elaborate part of their web site.
The invaders actually got me interested in graffiti-as-art in general. If you've never checked out some of the really neat graffiti, go over to graffiti.org to check out some of the better stuff. I also have some photos of Grenoble's large graffiti wall up at ambient.2y.net. Granted, a lot of graffiti is just people showing off or advertising their gang or whatever, but some of it is truly amazing.
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I spent last year studying abroad in Grenoble, France, and became interested in these little guys when i noticed them starting to crop up around the city there. Apparently there's only one tile one in Grenoble, but there are many more that are spraypainted. I started noticing them in other cities, too, and for a while I really thought they were some sort of city beautification project. The tile ones, especially, are very well done.
Inferring from space-invaders.com, this phenomenon is pushed mostly by a couple of French kids. I think they either live in Montpellier (in the south of France) or in Paris, because that's where I saw the most tile invaders, and those two cities are the most elaborate part of their web site.
The invaders actually got me interested in graffiti-as-art in general. If you've never checked out some of the really neat graffiti, go over to graffiti.org to check out some of the better stuff. I also have some photos of Grenoble's large graffiti wall up at ambient.2y.net. Granted, a lot of graffiti is just people showing off or advertising their gang or whatever, but some of it is truly amazing.