The Null Device

Somebody has been going around the London Underground with specially printed transparency stickers, adding a station named "Brown Punk" to the Hammersmith & City line:

And then there's the graffiti all over town, reading "Alphabet of Brooke Shields" or its variations.

(via london-underground) ¶ détournement graffiti london tube [no comments]

While London's transport system shut down for Christmas, gangs of graffitiists made their way into the tunnels and spray-painted Camden Town tube station. Unfortunately, we're not talking about Banksy-esque acts of carefully measured artistic subversion here, but just tagging and covering as much space with big ugly letters as possible. (Bonus points for obliterating information boards; those commuters unable to see where their train is going from will be deeply aware that they are your bitch and You Da Man. Wanker.) Anyway, there are pictures here and here).

Meanwhile, someone else stole into Brixton tube station and did their own bit of redecorating; they seem to have been somewhat less destructive and more concerned with actual aesthetics, rather than just pissing all over everything; photos here and here.

(via london-underground) ¶ crime graffiti london tube [no comments]

In response to the Melbourne City Council's vandalism policy (interpret that how you will), a coalition of troublemakers has convened the Melbourne Graffiti Games:

In response to this, and the Victorian Governments decision to waste $1 million dollars of tax-payers money in setting up an anti-graffiti taskforce, GGOC have announced the commencement of the 2006 Graffiti Games. During the Graffiti Games, which begin next week and end in April 2006, the entire Central Business District has been declared a maximum tolerance zone open to street art of all forms.Unlike the elitist Commonwealth Games the Graffiti Games will be open to anyone with a spray-can and a good or bad idea. The entire population of Victoria, as well as interstate and international visitors, are encouraged to compete. Although all who take part, and the public at large, will be winners in this tournament the Graffiti Games Organising Committee will also be awarding Gold, Silver and Bronze medals to the most popular entrants in various categories.

These will include -

1. Most Elaborate Stencil Piece
2. Funniest Slogan
3. Largest Graffiti Piece
4. Most Daring Placement
5. Best Caricature of the Mayor or other City Of Melbourne Councillor
6. Most Seditious Piece

(via "mike p") ¶ graffiti melbourne street art [no comments]

The Melbourne City Council has declared war on the city's status as a stencil-art capital with their new zero-tolerance graffiti plan. Under the plan, building owners will be legally obliged to either remove graffiti (which includes aerosol art or stencil art) or put in applications for each individual piece to remain. And so, the city becomes a little more like Singapore or Giuliani's New York.

(via flickrgroups:melbournegraffiti) ¶ graffiti melbourne street art [1 comment]

A video game simulating being a graffiti artist is in the works. Titled Getting Up, it was developed with the involvement of hip-hop streetwear mogul Mark Ecko and various veteran graffitiists and urban artists (including Shepard Fairey of Obey Giant fame). (I wonder whether Banksy approved of the rat-shaped stencil that's visible in the Flash site.) It's said to be an accurate simulation of the activity of tagging/doing pieces and avoiding the police, and has a story line about an evil, megalomanic mayor (which sounds like Turk 182 meets Rudy Giuliani). No word on when it's coming out or what platforms on.

(via moebius_rex) ¶ getting up graffiti hip-hop mark ecko videogames [2 comments]

It looks like the OXO OVO graffiti may have made it to London:

Then again, there aren't any cryptic slogans about literacy, religion or what have you, so it could be fake.

¶ graffiti london oxo ovo photos [2 comments]

Jamaican underground photojournalist types unmask Banksy, and take him to task for being a hypocritical wanker. Let the flaming begin. (via MeFi)

¶ banksy graffiti jamaica [no comments]

The next trend in graffiti, after aerosol art, stencil art and pasted-on designs, involves selectively cleaning grimy walls. It's much like stencil art, only rather than applying aerosol paint, the artist uses solvent and scrubs a shaped area of the wall clean, creating a distinct image. And, led by the apparent legality of cleaning public surfaces, guerilla advertisers are getting onboard; some chap in Leeds named "Moose" has been commissioned by Diageo to advertise Smirnoff vodka in this fashion. The Leeds City Council, however, doesn't quite see it that way.

¶ cleaning graffiti guerilla marketing street art [no comments]

It looks like some aspiring homie recently saw the Lord of the Rings films:

¶ graffiti photos tolkien [2 comments]

Sunday Photo Feature #03: decoration on traffic-light control boxes in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, 2003:

¶ brisbane graffiti melbourne photos street art sydney [no comments]

Meet Hektor, a Swiss-designed spraycan graffiti robot, or possibly one of the world's largest portable inkjet printers. (Note that it's not the largest, as the BBC piece suggests; I recall a larger version of GraffitiWriter, one of Hektor's predecessors, mounted on the underside of a van, and used to inscribe dot-matrix slogans on roads.)

¶ graffiti hacks robots [2 comments]

This is nifty: Random Movement Printing Technology. A printer the size of a mobile phone, which you can download images/data to, and then use it to print on any piece of paper (or other printable surface) by rubbing the printer over it. The printer tracks its movement and rotation and prints the appropriate parts of the image as it moves.

I'm now thinking that if someone were to fit these with indelible paint nozzles, they could use them as an urban graffiti tool, sort of like a more high-tech analogue of stencil art. The street finds its own uses for things and all that.

¶ graffiti printers tech [1 comment]

Authorities in California are testing a new high-tech solution for catching graffitiists: a network of sensors which detect the sound of aerosol cans and notify police, giving GPS coordinates. A worthy application of space-age technology to tackling contemporary urban blight, or a racist/classist attack on hip-hop culture/people's art, aimed at depriving urban minorities of non-corporate means of communications? Discuss. (via NWD)

¶ graffiti hip-hop lawenforcement occupation tech [16 comments]

Spain's graffiti commandos are what Melbourne's homies (and indeed Prahran's logo-T-shirt set) can only dream of being:

They film their creations and sell the footage to specialist distributors for internet music magazines, or the city's avant garde pubs. Split-second timing is the key. One member of the "commando" - which can number up to 20 - travels on the train. At a given moment and place, he pulls the emergency cord and the train stops. The artists leap into action and - crucial to the financial success of the operation- film themselves in front of their creation before escaping.

¶ graffiti spain [no comments]

Soup, Cos' new community blog storytelling project, has an entry on overpasses as community noticeboards; i.e., the tendency for people to write birthday wishes, declarations of love, &c., on bridges and overpasses.

Many years ago, there was a graffito over Burwood Highway (I think it was on one of the Alamein line railway bridges), reading "I'LL ALWAYS MISS YOU EILEEN &heart; SD". I saw it many times when being driven to school, and imagined a tearful SD writing that before jumping to his death below. It occurred to me later that the bridge was nowhere near high enough to reliably commit suicide from, by when my mental image of SD was revised to lying with a broken leg in the middle of Burwood Highway at 3am, a bucket of paint spilled beside him, the pain distracting him from his broken heart, and the alcohol taking some of the edge off the pain.

One day I saw a piece in a community paper (I think it was out Ferntree Gully way), by a journalist who tracked down the real SD, who wrote his famous message one drunken night after Eileen left him, a decade or so earlier. Since then he had married another girl, bought a house in Boronia or Upwey or some place, and become a father. Every day he would commute to work down Burwood Highway and see his younger self's testament of undying love; sometimes, he said, he wanted to climb the bridge and paint over the silly thing once and for all.

¶ culture eileen graffiti love melbourne sd stories stupidity [1 comment]

Graffito seen in mens' toilets at the Rob Roy:

¶ graffiti hobart rob roy [10 comments]

Selected graffiti found in the gents' toilets, Town Hall Hotel:

LIVING IN A NATION WHERE
THOUGHT IS CONTRABAND

MY ILLNESS IS MY TREATMENT

Q: What is E.T. short for?
A: He's just got really small legs.

¶ graffiti humour [2 comments]

Some memes just keep going: Seen on a mX dispenser (that's the free murdoch full of celebrity stories, consensus-reality-reinforcing propaganda and other pinkness and horror) in Museum Melbourne Central station:

¶ all your base graffiti melbourne murdoch photos [2 comments]