May 2, 2008
GRL: The Complete First Season This Sunday at NYC's MoMa
If you're in New York this weekend, be sure to head over to MoMA where the Graffiti Research Laboratory will be premiering their film, GRL: The Complete First Season on Sunday, May 4th @ 8PM. After the flick, there will be a talk with a range of artists featured in the film, including Mark Jenkins, Leon Reid, and Steve Lambert. You can learn more here, but be sure to check out the trailer below...
G.R.L. The Complee7 First Season (Trailer) from fi5e on Vimeo.
Posted by marc at 7:00 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (20) |
| January 29, 2008
Geek Graffiti
<via>
Posted by marc at 7:46 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (73) |
January 28, 2008
Tagged In Motion - An Explanation
"Walls, trains or house fronts - graffiti need to be sprayed on solid, "real" backgrounds. Doesn't it? An answer to this is provided by the "Tagged in Motion" project, which builds a bridge between real graffiti art and its virtual depiction. The centre of attention is the graffiti artist DAIM, who co-created the nextwall. Equipped with the appropriate technology, DAIM sprays graffiti into empty space. In a large hall, three cameras using Motion Capturing record DAIM's position and the movements he executes with a virtual spray can. The assimilated data is shown to him in real time in a pair of video glasses - as free-floating 3D graffiti in space. In this way he can decide how and where to apply his strokes, and via a Bluetooth controller can also determine the colours, strength of brushstrokes and textures of his work."
More info here.
<via>
Posted by marc at 8:25 PM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (52) |
October 23, 2007
Shit We're Diggin': Light-Up Sidewalk Brick
(Read the story on the MAKE blog)
Posted by marc at 9:16 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (29) |
May 2, 2007
Drip TXT
"Using a projector, a computer, and a homemade mobile SMS gateway, watch as your projected text message is spelled out in the digitally captured writing style of NYC Graffiti Artist Jesus Saves. Don't use your mobile phone to escape your surroundings, use it to engage it and speak out. Created by Paul Notzold and Adam Chapman".
More photos and info here.
Posted by marc at 6:46 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (20) |
March 15, 2007
OPEN CITY Goes Online
One of our favorite shows this year has been GRL's OPEN CITY at Eyebeam here in New York. True to the spirit of everything they do, the Graffiti Research Lab has put the entire show online here . (But that shouldn't stop you from actually seeing the show, as it's up until April 7th and is worth the trip to Chelsea)
There's a ton of great videos in the show. Here's a couple of our favorites:
Posted by marc at 6:51 AM in Geek Graffiti , Video | Recommend this! (32) |
February 27, 2007
Open City Opens This Thursday Night At Eyebeam
GRL's fantastic Open City event finally opens this week on Thursday March 1st at the Eyebeam space in Chelsea. It's been in the works for over a year now and looks to be incredible.
Tools and methods of the following artists will be on display:
Aram Bartholl, BORF, G.R.L., Institute for Applied Autonomy, Improve
Everywhere, Mark Jenkins, KATSU, KR, Object Orange, Leon Reid, Matthia
Wermke, and Krzysztof Wodiczko.
GRL will have their laser tagging system running for people to try out. The original Boston Mooninitie will be on display as well as ""videos of people breaking laws and running around with no pants, movie screenings, and workshops workshops workshops."
Things will be going on all month at Eyebeam, this week is as follows:
March 2: (3-5pm)
Aram Bartholl - First Person Shooter glasses workshops (
http://www.datenform.de/fps.html )
March 3: (3-5pm)
Aram Bartholl - WoW workshop / performance (
http://www.datenform.de/wow.html )
Mark Jenkins - Tape sculptures workshop (
http://xmarkjenkinsx.com/index.html )
March 3: (5-6pm)
Screenings of shorts by Matthias Wermke, Object Orange, Krzysztof
Wodiczko, GRL and others.
March 8: (7:30pm)
Screening of State Your Name with introduction by filmmakers
Posted by marc at 12:45 PM in Geek Graffiti , New York | Recommend this! (24) |
February 20, 2007
L.A.S.E.R tag from GRL
Watch the video here. Amazing.
Posted by marc at 12:01 PM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (73) |
TXT-A-Sketch
Paul Notzold, working with Federico Hatoum, have been working on a community drawing tool that allows you to use SMS to draw on buildings. The piece will debut in the Streets of Rome, Italy from March 1 - 3. TXTual Healing and TXT-A-Sketch will both be on view as part of the Urban Portraits show at rialtosantambrosio
You can see video and photos here.
Posted by marc at 6:53 AM in Geek Graffiti , Projections | Recommend this! (15) |
January 30, 2007
The GRL Hit Rotterdam - February 7th through the 10th
The Graffiti Research Lab are continuing to raise the bar on what can be done when you merge technology and graffiti.
For their latest project they're inviting writers, street artists, pranksters, bikers, and protesters to contribute work as they take control of the Renzo Piano KPN Telecom building and the Kop Van Zuid in Rotterdam from February 7th through the 10th. During those evenings the massive 37 x 72 meter screen will become a place to display your uncurrated animations and graphics. The back-side of the KPN will become a giant open wall which you can write on with a GRL created "BFL (big fucking laser)". Throughout the week, the G.R.L. will venture outside the green zone on sorties to laser tag and projection bomb the city center of Rotterdam on the BORF riot bike.
Should be an amazing week.
You can learn more here.
Posted by marc at 6:49 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (15) |
January 20, 2007
TXTual Healing Hits Baltimore Tonight
Later tonight (Saturday), as part of a cell phone art show at the Contemporary Museum of Baltimore, Paul Notzold will be putting up his TXTual Healing project outside the gallery in the Baltimore Neighborhood of Mt. Vernon. The show will run from about 6 - 9 pm tonight so if you are in the area, come down and participate. Also, feel free to txt in during the show from the comfort of your own city. Send an SMS to 646.209.1786. no mms please.
Posted by marc at 8:00 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (14) |
November 16, 2006
Guerrilla Cinema at the Walker Art Center
This is very cool. At the famed Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, high school students can take a call where they learn how to do Guerrilla Cinema. Xavier Tavera is a Minneapolis based artist that has recently been working with projection on the street. The Walker Art Center asked him to work with ten students to create their own videos and outdoor, site specific projects. You can learn more on the class blog here.
Posted by marc at 7:16 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (16) |
October 11, 2006
Fear Fighter
'Fear Fighter' is an interactive street projection. Asking the question, "What are you afraid of?" You text message your fears to the displayed number and they appear in his thoughts as he guns them down. It's the latest txt message enabled street performance by Paul Notzold.
You can check out a video by clicking here.
Posted by marc at 6:33 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (60) |
September 20, 2006
"High Writer"
Made by C in Belgium, mostly from bicycle parts: the saddle, brake handle, springs, cables, bolts...
Posted by marc at 7:24 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (92) |
August 30, 2006
Writing With Water
From NODSTER -
"The german Claus Winter, a friend of mine, developed a new technique for an installation-artist, making whatever word you type into the computer visible by a "water-curtain". You can type in the text from all over the world via the web. the effect is amazing! This video below shows the world-premiere during the "nuit-blanche" in paris in oct.05. the theme for this presentation was PARIS itself and words the artists associate with it.the possibilities opened through this are huge! It makes your brain go wild, finding tons of ideas what one could do with this.Hope you like it."
Posted by marc at 9:21 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (48) |
August 29, 2006
Karolina's Wild Animals
Karolina Sobecka makes night projections of wild animals from moving cars. The coolest thing about the project is that the movements of the animals are programmed to match the speed of the car that is projecting it.
She writes... "as the car moves, the animal runs along it speeding up and slowing down with the car, as the car stops, the animal stops also. The framerate of the movie corresponds to the speed of the wheel rotation, picked up by a sensor. If the presence of a moving object (such as another car or pedestrian) is detected with proximity sensors, its animal "avatar" appears in the projection.
Check out the video here.
Posted by marc at 7:19 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (31) |
July 27, 2006
Going Big in Beijing
Last week TXTual Healing hit the streets of Beijing, China, projecting their TXTual Healing project on the Millennium Museum.
Posted by marc at 6:53 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (2) |
July 26, 2006
G.R.L's High Writer
The Graffiti Research Lab have released their latest project. It's called the High Writer, and is demonstrated by the skilled hands of KATSU. "Catch 30' x 15' tags in 15 minutes or less or your money back!"
You can learn more about it here.
The prototype High Writer will be auctioned off at the Benefit Art Show for Daniel McGowan hosted by Visual Resistance. All proceeds from the show will benefit the legal fund of local environmental and social justice activist Daniel McGowan.
Thursday, July 27 & Friday, July 28, 2006, 5-10pm ABC No Rio, 156 Rivington St
Lower East Side, NYC
Posted by marc at 7:49 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (2) |
July 21, 2006
Pixile Projections
Pixile is a mobile projection system using sculptural installation. The Pixile creates a holographic illusion of spherical objects spinning, changing and reacting to each other in mid space. People passing by can interact with the Pixile by moving and rotating the objects in real-time. The Pixile will respond to the persons body movements, sounds and even wind in the air. You can learn more here and see a video of the project here.
The images above were recently taken in Melbourne’s Federation Square. The Pixile team will be coming to New York in September to exhibit the Pixile project at Wired NextFest06.
Posted by marc at 7:10 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! |
June 23, 2006
Graffiti Research Lab in New York Times
The other day we gave a short interview to Geeta Dayal at the New York Times about the amazing work that the Graffiti Research Lab at Eyebeam is doing. The article ran today in the International Herald. It's fantastic to see Evan and James get the much deserved recognition. Here's the article in full:
Devising digital techniques for graffiti artists
By Geeta Dayal The New York Times
Published: June 23, 2006
NEW YORK This city may have given birth to modern-day graffiti art, but how is it keeping up with the times?
Graffiti in its traditional form, involving aerosol cans of spray paint and an inviting flat surface, still dominates on the streets. But online things are evolving quickly.
Techniques are debated in forums, and photos of tags, or signatures, are constantly uploaded and swapped on popular photo-sharing Web sites like flickr.com. Sites like Wooster Collective (woostercollective.com) function as digital galleries and as clearinghouses for street art on an international level.
Graffiti and other forms of street art are gaining recognition in major New York museums. The Museum of Modern Art recently acquired three oversize woodcuts and linoleum cuts by the current street art sensation Swoon; the pieces currently are being shown as part of the exhibition "Since 2000: Printmaking Now." On Friday the Brooklyn Museum was to open "Graffiti," a major exhibition of large-scale graffiti paintings that includes works by 1980s trailblazers like Lady Pink (Sandra Fabara) and NOC 167 (Melvin Samuels Jr.).
Now New York has its own center for the study of graffiti technology. The nascent Graffiti Research Lab is masterminded by two tech-minded artists, Evan Roth and James Powderly, and run from the Eyebeam gallery, a nonprofit arts and technology center where both men are fellows.
The purpose of the project is to rethink how people make and look at graffiti and street art, not by making the stuff but by developing tools that graffiti writers could potentially use.
"I'm not a graffiti writer," Powderly, 29, said. "I like to say I'm a graffiti engineer." Using their odd combination of training - Powderly's background is in aerospace robotics, Roth's is in coding, architecture and Web design - they develop new methods of self-expression. These include a panoply of digital projection techniques, LED-driven light art and specially written computer programs.
"As more and more people learn to program at a younger age, and computers get cheaper, graffiti is eventually going to have these technological elements as a part of it," Roth said.
Roth, 28, is a wunderkind in his tiny but thriving world. A valedictorian of the Parsons School of Design's graduate program in design and technology, he developed a thesis project called Graffiti Analysis, which used motion-tracking techniques and custom-written code to analyze and record a graffiti writer's hand movement over time. Working with several graffiti writers, Roth created a series of striking digital projections of graffiti being "written" at night on various New York buildings. No physical mark is left on the building by this ghostly process, but it looks shockingly real while it is happening.
In a related project, Graffiti Taxonomy, Roth photographed hundreds of graffiti tags on the Lower East Side, and created detailed typographic charts of various letters of the alphabet based on the visual data he collected.
A flurry of New York-based graduate thesis projects in recent years have explored new forms of technology-oriented graffiti, including John Geraci's Grafedia, a method of creating hyperlinked graffiti on city streets, and Joshua Kinberg's Bikes Against Bush, which uses text messaging and a custom-built dot-matrix printer connected to a bicycle to print giant chalk letters on the sidewalk.
So far the Graffiti Research Lab's activities include the Electro-Graf, a simple method of using magnetic and conductive paint to embed LED electronics inside a graffiti piece, surrounding the graffiti with a halo of brilliant light; LED "throwies," tiny and colorful battery-powered lights attached to magnets, designed to be thrown onto urban surfaces; the Night Writer, an inexpensive device that posts foot-tall messages in glowing LED lights on metallic surfaces in a single fluid motion; and Jesus 2.0, a recent light sculpture collaboration with the street artist Mark Jenkins of Washington. The lab is also working to refine various digital projection ideas that Roth explored in his Graffiti Analysis project.
The Graffiti Research Lab's values follow the idea-sharing philosophy of the open source movement: Roth and Powderly provide free and detailed online documentation on their Web site (graffitiresearchlab.com) so that anyone can follow - and replicate - their work. Roth also teaches a class at Parsons entitled "Geek Graffiti."
Roth realizes that eager companies may co-opt the lab's work, although he is strongly anticommercial. "Marketing people went crazy over the project," he said of Graffiti Analysis, "because it's cool and it's big and it's projected in public. They look at Graffiti Analysis and see their company's image inserted in there." The projects are intentionally designed to be cheap, user-friendly and not illegal. "The kind of stuff I've been doing is intentionally geared to a wider audience," Roth said. "One of the goals with the Graffiti Research Lab is to try to remove some of the negative connotations that graffiti has."
Roth's interest in studying graffiti and street art blossomed after he moved to New York from Los Angeles. A turning point, he said, was seeing the classic documentary "Style Wars," which immortalized the 1980s face-off between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and graffiti writers. "They were hacking the subway to transport these huge art pieces from borough to borough," Roth said of the artists. "That movie makes graffiti feel like such a movement."
Studying New York's graffiti soon became his preoccupation. "I did get totally obsessed with it," he said, "to the point where I couldn't walk down the street and have conversations with people without having my gaze sidetracked by a tag."
The transportation authority recently proposed a $25 million plan to combat acid-based window etchings, also called scratchiti, on subway cars. The agency is also considering the use of surveillance cameras to track down graffiti writers.
"There's a strong crackdown, and gentrification changes the streets," said Marc Schiller, the founder of Wooster Collective. "But it's a great time to be creative in general. Creativity is so accessible now. On the street and off, on the Web, the barriers to being creative have never been lower."
Posted by marc at 1:37 PM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (2) |
June 12, 2006
TXTual Healing
Using cell phones and SMS messaging, TXTual healing allows people to use their mobile phones and SMS messaging to fill in the text of large speech bubbles that are projected onto walls and buildings. You can learn more about the project here.
(Thanks, Reevo)
Posted by marc at 7:27 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (2) |
May 16, 2006
"Graffiti Jumble Project"
A few weeks ago we were invited by Evan Roth to visit his amazing "Geek Graffiti" class that he teaches at Parsons here in New York. One of the projects that was presented that we quite liked was Robyn Hasty's "Graffiti Jumble Project". A few days ago she put up the first prototype up by the Williamsburg waterfront. You can learn more about the project here.
Posted by marc at 7:25 AM in Geek Graffiti | Recommend this! (2) |