New York bombardé de Geek Graffiti

J'ai lu ceci sur wired.com. C'est en anglais mais c'est très intéressant. Voici l'article...

Citation :

Geek Graffiti Takes on New York

NEW YORK -- The group of 12 graffiti artists surrounds its target, a sculpture in Manhattan known as The Cube, and waits for the signal to begin tagging it up. It's a daunting task -- the 15-foot sculpture in Astor Place was recently coated with anti-graffiti paint.

But within seconds, The Cube is covered in LED Throwies, the latest innovation from the Graffiti Research Lab, or GRL, an open-source think tank dedicated to developing new methods and tools for street artists.

Despite its coating of Acrolon paint and extra lacquer, the metallic sculpture isn't protected from the magnetic, multicolored LEDs, which attach themselves to every surface.

The commotion soon attracts a crowd of passersby, and suddenly everyone, including kids, are throwing Throwies.

The GRL was started by graffiti writers Q-Branch and Fi5e after a brainstorm on, among other things, how to get around anti-graffiti paint.

To them, the lab is part of the cat-and-mouse game that graffiti artists constantly play with city authorities. Anti-graffiti paint is simply the most recent weapon in the battle against the artists, but "if the cat ramps up, so does the mouse," said Fi5e.

LED Throwies, which cost only 75 cents to make and stay bright for two weeks, are one of several DIY, street-ready technologies that the GRL has dreamed up since its inception in February.

Another development is the Electro-Graf, a technique that lets street artists embed LEDs, motors, solar panels or other electrical objects into a wall using conductive spray paint. Electro-Graf techniques give traditional tags a vibrant shine or even moving parts.

The ragtag group making its mark on The Cube includes students from the Geek Graffiti class at Parsons and members of the graffiti group Visual Resistance.

"Graffiti is such a mainstay here that New Yorkers pass over it, but this catches their eye and maybe makes them think about how they interact with public space," said Jack, a member of Visual Resistance who withheld her last name.

The group prepared for the night's activities by making more than 600 LED Throwies and playing the new video game Getting Up by fashion designer Marc Ecko, whose main character, "Trane," is a rebellious graffiti artist.

Although this is only the second group outing for LED Throwies, the adventure in new age graffiti is hailed a success.

"It's nondestructive graffiti, which is great," said Valorie Gentile, who is walking by The Cube when the LED assault begins. "Usually graffiti is a negative thing but this seems to have children and families involved, which is not typical of graffiti."

The tagging begins when Fi5e places an LED arrangement spelling "Free Borf" on The Cube. It's an example of a "night writer" that spells out different taggers' names. In this case "Borf" is a pseudonym for John Tsombikos, an 18-year-old graffiti artist in Washington, D.C., who was recently arrested.

The field test helps GRL smooth out any kinks, such as the fact that LED Throwies often bounce off their targets instead of sticking.

"That's why we call them Throwies and not Stickies," Fi5e joked.

After placing "Free Borf," members of the crowd pull down the magnetic LEDs and throw them up again wherever they see fit. Some loft the Throwies onto other metallic structures nearby.

"I'm really into graffiti projects that don't look like graffiti," said Eliot from Visual Resistance, who declined to give his last name. "That's what I love about this; you don't look like you are doing graffiti."

Voici quelques photos de ces petites gugusses graff-électrique...







Sites intéressant:
http://graffitiresearchlab.com/
http://www.instructables.com/ex/i/95C0F26AF25910288451001143E7E506/
http://www.visualresistance.org/

Le graffiti rencontre la technologie dans un orgie visuel. Un must see.