A few words from the "Archaeologist".
Cassidy Curtis
June 2005
Graffiti is the chameleon skin of the urban landscape. Equal parts
public art and vandalism, virtuosity and subversion, it is among the
most ephemeral forms of human expression. Graffiti walls are
repainted frequently, as different writers compete and collaborate on
the public canvas. A given piece may last years, weeks, or mere
hours. For graffiti writers, this is expected and in fact fundamental
to their process, which they perceive as an ongoing dialogue. However,
most city dwellers experience this constant change only at a
subconscious level.
Graffiti Archaeology (grafarc.org) captures this process of
constant change and makes it visible. Grafarc.org is an interactive,
timelapse collage of photographs of certain walls, taken over a span
of months or years. The photos are precisely superimposed, so that by
moving through the layers, you experience a compressed version of time
passing, as old tags are submerged beneath new ones. You can see how
one writer's style changes over the years, or explore the dialogue
between writers as they paint over each other's work. The project
also functions as a living archive, since most of the pieces on the
site no longer exist in the real world.
Grafarc.org mirrors the actual public space of city walls in the
virtual public space of the internet. The site design is intended to
encourage curiosity and exploration; to facilitate comparisons over
time and space; and to reveal, rather than hide, the assembly
process. Each photocollage is assembled by hand and corrected for
skewed perspectives and lighting so as to faithfully recreate the
appearance of the flat wall. However, the warped photos' irregular
outlines are preserved, hinting at the photographer's original
point of view.
The photos themselves are gathered from diverse sources, including
my own collection, other photographers, and various graffiti sites on
the web. As grafarc.org expands to include more cities, the web is
becoming ever more important as a resource for the project. The site
has attracted the attention of both graffiti artists and
photographers, and a vital online community is beginning to form
around it (http://flickr.com/groups/grafarc). This community has
become essential for weaving together disparate threads of visual
information into a nuanced, structured historical record.
This project is an example of a new phenomenon unique to the era of
digital photography and the internet: structured, networked,
grass-roots assemblage. The world is being more throroughly
photographed now than at any point in human history, and people are
sharing these photos freely on the web. Choose a subject, and you can
now see it from many different points of view, even from people who
only captured it accidentally. Graffiti Archaeology shows that by
assembling and juxtaposing these scattered fragments, we can gain new
kinds of insight. What else can we reconstruct from so many points of
view? What subtle dimensions will we discover?
What people are saying about Graffiti Archaeology
Graffiti Archaeology is one of the most ambitious, as well as impressive, web projects we've come across in quite some time. -Wooster Collective
The whole spectacle of Graffiti Archaeology has a kind of
protozoan beauty about it. -Sarah Boxer, The
New York Times
It's a design tour de force. -Boing Boing
The navigation tools turn what could have been a slide show into a fascinating excavation. -USA Today
Websites have been displaying pictures of graffiti art for
nearly a decade. Graffiti Archaeology is the first to show the work's
evolution, and its context. -Noah Shachtman, Wired
News
Anyone who's looked at all those peeling layers of paint has
wondered what's underneath. And they've thought, "Wouldn't it be great
if there was some kind of slide show to show us this space over time?"
But this is the first time it's been done in any kind of methodical
way before. -Susan Farrell, Art Crimes
...embraces the principles of visual elegance and communicative
clarity that have been at the core of graphic design since anonymous
scribes first developed writing. -Mark Getlein, Living with Art
.
Possibly one of the coolest things to come out of street art and Flash, especially for those of us who have a weird craving for archiving... These are the kinds of ghosts from the past that we are definitely interested in dredging up. -Juxtapoz Online
A neat site, but can it really be considered archaeology? -Anita Cohen-Williams, ArchaeologyOnline
