Graffiti Research Lab's Public Art Revolution

Sharing tools and ideas, the Graffiti Research Lab has applied the crowd's wisdom to graffiti, "outfitting graffiti artists with open source technologies to improve urban communication," as GRL's site declares. Artists create new methods and types of graffiti, including LED throwies that, through their efforts, have emblazoned entire buildings from Brooklyn to Rotterdam.

Check out their Flickr group to get a sense of the graffiti that people have created by adopting the tools that the GRL has released to the public.

Background: Because everyone can do it and everyone else sees it, graffiti is the original crowdsourced art form. Media/power monopoly shuts out independent voices, but the human spirit always finds ways to express itself anyway, which is why graffiti has always been a threat, and why you need to "read the writing on the wall" in order to learn what people really think. It's art without the frame, uncomfortably un-compartmentalized, messily mixed in with the real world-- which you're not supposed to contemplate or think about too much.

Felt-tip markers and spray paint revolutionized the medium when they first came out in 19TK, but a larger revolution is taking place now, as new and newly-cheap technologies give artists far more power to install visuals in public spaces. Graffiti Research Lab is on the vanguard of this revolution, designing and using open-source new-media art supplies like LED's, disposable electronics, and digital projectors.

LEDs, electrolumenescent wire, and disposable electronics enable colorful, flashing signs and installations, and turn the public spaces into today's Salons des Refusés -- the traditional exhibit spaces for artists who are locked out of established art venues. Digital projectors can turn entire buildings into screens that show any imagery you can create, capture, download, rip, transfer, or generate on the fly. Because these artworks appear in public, they test and reveal people's reactions to each other and inspire conversations with an immediacy that's impossible online.

The first wide reporting on this phenomena came in February, after LED circuit board signs were installed around Boston to advertise Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force, part of their stoner-friendly Adult Swim nighttime lineup. Authorities in Boston mistook the signs for bombs and initiated a lockdown, a move that was widely ridiculed. Here's the Boston Globe's reporting on the flap, Froth, fear, and fury in Boston.

This story could go in a lot of fun directions, but here are some good folks that should definitely be interviewed for it (Paul can supply contact info):

James Powderly (and hopefully others) / Graffiti Research Lab

Harry Haller or Jack Napier / Billboard Liberation Front

Other ideas for people to interview (need to track down contact info):

Peter Berdovsky or Sean Stevens / they installed Aqua Teen signs in Boston and were scapegoated in resulting circus

Richard Serra (Just a thought-- no harm tryin') -- ask him if graffiti forces the public to confront art in the same way that some of his public plaza works do, and how/whether it matters artistically whether a work has institutional approval or not.