I like the concept, wish it was a vertical scroll with some safe margins between each picture (also to give them more stage time and removing the noise/distraction from many pictures stitched together)
Fascinating, I do love street art and tastefully done graffiti. Some of it is obnoxious. I think it does add to the character of a city e.g. New York, Berlin, Montreal, Paris all have some amazing work etc.
There is a an Irish artist called Dan Leo and I have bought lots of his prints. https://www.danleodesign.com/ so they are dotted around my office and home.
I think they're great! He does animals and I love the style, clean lines and bright colours, they remind me of US football team logos.
I live near Paris, and it's a shame to see this sort of thing on every surface here. It's so easy and effortless to trash the look of a place, and so much effort and pain to get it back to a presentable state. It just seems hopeless trying to stop it.
Sure, you can point to examples of graffiti that don't look all that bad, and I imagine some examples can even be considered to improve the look of a space. But taking this site as a random sample, the "good" ones are a vanishing minority. For every subtle Invader mosaic high on a building, you get dozens of effortless name tags that just wreck the look of a place.
Adding frustration is the fact that there's no way to effectively dissuade people from doing this. You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop. You just want them to stop spraypainting shit. It's really the only example I can think of where I'd support some form of corporal punishment. Catch kids in the act, 20 lashes in the town square to convince them not to do it again, then set them to work with a wire brush until they can demonstrate that it's back to the state they found it. Even still, I can't imagine it would really do much to dissuade.
I consider corporal punishment inherently barbaric. An appropriate fine or short stay in jail ought not be life-ruining.
Also, I think there are other effective approaches in some circumstances. People (including "the kids"), locally (Toronto) and other places I've heard of, have been paid (not a super common thing, but it happens) to do actual artwork. There's a mural I consider quite well done, not too far from my place, that isn't getting defaced even though it's in a place where I would otherwise ordinarily expect strong temptation to "tagging" and other graffiti.
I really enjoy graffiti murals, and I go out of my way to photograph them in my own city and when I travel. I will see them when I driving or walking around and stop to look for a moment and try to understand the perspective and message of the artist and take a picture if I can.
That said, I don't much like tagging, tagging is generally not art in my opinion even if you can say artist styles are used within it. Tagging is all about ego and selfishness, it's there purely for the sake of saying "I was here", as if you are the most important person in the city that you should claim to put your name on that wall.
I've met quite a few graffiti artists all over the world in my travels, and the people who tag and the people who paint murals are by and large /not/ the same people. The folks who paint murals are trying to say something, the folks who tag have nothing more to say than to try to create a monument of some kind to themselves. I don't respect taggers, I do respect muralists.
Are there places people can legally grafitti there? In a number of small towns there are unofficial grafitti rocks or walls in public view that redirects a lot of peoples mischief and desire to display public art. Nobody is in any actual trouble if they are caught painting it although you will lose your paint.
It might not be a total solution, but it could have a significant impact on grafitti other places.
I think mostly here in switzerland, it’s tolerated in certain areas, and even directly sponsored, in Lausanne, nearly every pedestrian underpass is completely covered in pretty good work, every bit of street furniture has unique designs that seem to be left alone by taggers, areas that might otherwise be run down are covered in colourful murals that are regularly refreshed, i think this is the right approach.
My theory is that graffiti is tied to the feeling of lack of agency in one's life. Everyone wants to "make their mark on the world". Some of us get to do that with an interesting career, building a family, getting involved in the community. If you feel excluded from all that, like those things are beyond your reach, you might resort to things like graffiti. IMO it's something that says "I exist, and I can change things around me" for those who don't have a better way to do that.
Based on that we "fix" the problem by making sure that everyone has a chance to make a fulfilling life for themselves. Better & freer education; Healthcare; cost of living & wage support. Etc.
> You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop.
Oh yes, you want to (with an asterisk). As a former Graffiti writer myself I can speak from experience that the judge will be the first person in those kids life taking their actions seriously, giving them any sort of guidance.
Better spend a couple of hours per month doing social work than letting them slip further away until no softer juvenile criminal code is there to protect them.
I understand what you're saying but harsh punishment doesn't really work, they just increase the stakes of the crime and lead to more desperate behavior to avoid getting caught rather than less occurrence of the crime itself. Pretty much the only effective form of crime deterrent is economic development, i.e. give people something else to do.
an invader mosiac is not graffiti, it's street art, which is more or less the mortal enemy of graff. I'm not even trolling when I say people with attitudes like yours are what legit motivate so many graff writers out there.
Having a bit of a cultural shock at how English doesn't have a separate name for the "cruder" graffiti (such as tags) vs the more socially accepted street art. The former is typically called "pichação" [1] in Portuguese, and I was taught this distinction when learning about modern art movements back in elementary school.
[1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picha%C3%A7%C3%A3o - I recommend looking into a machine translated version of the Portuguese Wikipedia article, as the English Wikipedia article reads far more biased
I expect the mundane "wildstyle" tagging on train cars but have been surprised a few times to see trains roll through town with much more complex graffiti. I'm happy to see examples of some of that more artful work in this post.
If you've seen the film, "Brother From Another Planet" you might look at graffiti a little differently as I do. :-)
It’s vandalizing public property in the same way that human shit vandalizes a lot of public property in SF. I don’t know which one is worse. One can be beautiful, the other is done because he has no choice.
For graffiti I’m in support of lashing or whipping the people that do this. It’s effective in Singapore. But then we lose all this great public art.
We have places in Zurich where anyone can spray (I'm sure most cities have designated areas like this) but they still come out into the neighborhoods and do it. Its usually in areas with poor refugee/subsidized housing but the people doing the graffiti are local young swiss, making areas where they don't live shittier.
The thing that really gets me about graffiti is that you don't own the canvas. It's just vandalism. If you're commissioned to do it one someone else's wall, I'd call that a mural instead, and I see quite a few aesthetically pleasing ones around. Why can't you paint on stuff you actually own, instead of making it someone else's problem? You might as well just shit on someone else's lawn and say it's fine because it's art
I did a similar pet project about 12 years ago called Graffiti City. It was very simple map that displays pins where reported cases of destruction of property with paint, aka graffiti art, throughout the city of San Francisco. This uses public data available at data.sfgov.org.
I'm surprised to see so many anti-graffiti comments here. Some of these are crude or ugly (and I'm aware that this is subjective), but a few of these are really good and don't deserve a citation. Meanwhile this thread is SCANDALIZED that there is GRAFFITI (clutch your pearls!). It really goes to show the ongoing slide into total conformity that is the tech industry. I remember when tech had more of a nonconformist, countercultural bent, but it has been dying for quite a few years.
I'm surprised and also not. We're a long ways away from 90s hacker culture, and even then there were plenty of upper class kids that were just in it for good pay working for the giant tech corps. We like to romanticize everyone dropping acid and being part of the counter culture, myself included, but reality is different.
The saddest part to me is that the aesthetic of street art has been totally consumed by major corporations and spit back out on to the streets here in Brooklyn. I laugh to myself whenever I walk by a tourist taking a selfie in front of some mural that is really just some brand advertisement.
I wish I could say this evoked a nostalgic feeling, but having lived in SF, the literal memory that came to mind immediately seeing these is the repulsive smell of urine and the sight of dirty, trash-laden sidewalks. While graffiti itself could be viewed as artistic expression on its own, I liked looking at some of it, in my mind it seems so often correlated with decay
For a small business owner, graffiti is an unconsented, recurring tax that provides zero ROI for the neighborhood. In SF if you own a business that gets tagged, you have X number of days to clean it up yourself otherwise YOU get fined.. the city does nothing to go after the criminals. They only go after law-abiding tax paying citizens cause that's where the money is.
59 comments
[ 17.8 ms ] story [ 71.0 ms ] thread* Orientation - some images are sideways,
* Option to walk through by date order, and by location ...
There is an audience for the time ordered flux of images on particular sites (at least in Australia).
I submit Irish Graffiti I see here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Graifiti/
Though I think displaying these things as a map is more useful: https://streetartcities.com/cities/sanfrancisco
There is a an Irish artist called Dan Leo and I have bought lots of his prints. https://www.danleodesign.com/ so they are dotted around my office and home.
I think they're great! He does animals and I love the style, clean lines and bright colours, they remind me of US football team logos.
Sure, you can point to examples of graffiti that don't look all that bad, and I imagine some examples can even be considered to improve the look of a space. But taking this site as a random sample, the "good" ones are a vanishing minority. For every subtle Invader mosaic high on a building, you get dozens of effortless name tags that just wreck the look of a place.
Adding frustration is the fact that there's no way to effectively dissuade people from doing this. You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop. You just want them to stop spraypainting shit. It's really the only example I can think of where I'd support some form of corporal punishment. Catch kids in the act, 20 lashes in the town square to convince them not to do it again, then set them to work with a wire brush until they can demonstrate that it's back to the state they found it. Even still, I can't imagine it would really do much to dissuade.
It's a shame.
Also, I think there are other effective approaches in some circumstances. People (including "the kids"), locally (Toronto) and other places I've heard of, have been paid (not a super common thing, but it happens) to do actual artwork. There's a mural I consider quite well done, not too far from my place, that isn't getting defaced even though it's in a place where I would otherwise ordinarily expect strong temptation to "tagging" and other graffiti.
That said, I don't much like tagging, tagging is generally not art in my opinion even if you can say artist styles are used within it. Tagging is all about ego and selfishness, it's there purely for the sake of saying "I was here", as if you are the most important person in the city that you should claim to put your name on that wall.
I've met quite a few graffiti artists all over the world in my travels, and the people who tag and the people who paint murals are by and large /not/ the same people. The folks who paint murals are trying to say something, the folks who tag have nothing more to say than to try to create a monument of some kind to themselves. I don't respect taggers, I do respect muralists.
It might not be a total solution, but it could have a significant impact on grafitti other places.
Based on that we "fix" the problem by making sure that everyone has a chance to make a fulfilling life for themselves. Better & freer education; Healthcare; cost of living & wage support. Etc.
Oh yes, you want to (with an asterisk). As a former Graffiti writer myself I can speak from experience that the judge will be the first person in those kids life taking their actions seriously, giving them any sort of guidance.
Better spend a couple of hours per month doing social work than letting them slip further away until no softer juvenile criminal code is there to protect them.
It's ok
[1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picha%C3%A7%C3%A3o - I recommend looking into a machine translated version of the Portuguese Wikipedia article, as the English Wikipedia article reads far more biased
I expect the mundane "wildstyle" tagging on train cars but have been surprised a few times to see trains roll through town with much more complex graffiti. I'm happy to see examples of some of that more artful work in this post.
If you've seen the film, "Brother From Another Planet" you might look at graffiti a little differently as I do. :-)
The comments were predictably howling with rage and injustice ("he's a criminal!!", says employee of cartel laundry HSBC), but I enjoyed it a lot.
https://www.ft.com/content/45a184ee-b7d9-4c16-b1c2-71def32cc...
It’s vandalizing public property in the same way that human shit vandalizes a lot of public property in SF. I don’t know which one is worse. One can be beautiful, the other is done because he has no choice.
For graffiti I’m in support of lashing or whipping the people that do this. It’s effective in Singapore. But then we lose all this great public art.
https://youtu.be/7Ub8uRFzUCQ
https://mergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/xndqw-full.jpg
The problem and solution are similar to OSS:
The problem: the artists have something to say, they want as many people as possible to see it and use it.
The solution: make it free, and put it where as many people as possible can access it.
Yes, I just compared graffiti to github.
The saddest part to me is that the aesthetic of street art has been totally consumed by major corporations and spit back out on to the streets here in Brooklyn. I laugh to myself whenever I walk by a tourist taking a selfie in front of some mural that is really just some brand advertisement.
I'm not. HN trends toward the most suburban conformist mindset possible.