S. James Snyder reports on recent developments in graffiti, which has begun to merge its own subculture with that of the Internet. In the long-gone, heady days of the late seventies and eighties, when graffiti had intricate connections to hip-hop and other emerging forms of urban youth culture, taggers were seen as dashing underground figures with spray cans, risking life and liberty to create eye-catching designs and placing them on the sides of buildings and subway trains designed to get maximum exposure in the places that counted. "Today," writes Snyder, "in an age dominated by technology and people who spend more time in the virtual world than the real world, graffiti artists must do a whole lot more than spray. For starters, there's the technological know-how of getting your work not just online, but into the social networks and channels populated by fans of the art form. Then there's the aesthetic quandary of how to translate one's work to the Internet. Should it exist as a photo album? A slide show? A graphic? A video?" The New York-based Graffiti Research Lab (G.R.L.) is on the case. "Founded by James Powderly and Evan Roth...G.R.L. has risen to fame in the graffiti community by posting an array of short films that show the group's late-night escapades, using a projector and a laser pointer to splash light on the sides of skyscrapers, much as their counterparts did some thirty years ago with spray paint on the sides of subway cars." They also create percussively edited short films, showing the taggers out in action, and post the results to YouTube. The visual imagination and cheeky attitude of the spots has gotten them enough attention that they were invited to participate in this year's Sundance Film Festival, where the group "filmed itself tagging the streets of Park City, Utah, editing together its exploits into final film that went on to enjoy its world premiere at the festial." (Later this month, they'll be having an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art as part of its series, "Design and the Electric Mind".)
Heavy stuff, but the way that Powderly sees it, they're trying to use the Internet and other new technologies the same way an earlier generation of taggers used the trains — as a way of disseminating their work. Powderly admits that "What we do definitely offers a twist to the traditional forms of graffiti. . . In some ways, we aren't facing the same consequences as other graffiti artists, who risk getting arrested. We can do a lot of what they do, but since our tags go away when we turn the equipment off, we can't follow them all the way to that edge." Snyder writes that the outfit's "brand of graffiti art may differ from conventional graffiti art in terms of execution, but not in terms of intent. Much as the taggers of the '70s wanted to express themselves creatively and leave a permanent mark on the establishment, so does G.R.L. approach its missions with a focus on showmanship, artistry, and provocation. If the mark isn't permanent, ideally the effect is." And in fact, their work is already a lot more "permanent" than most of the "classic" graffiti art that didn't last long enough to get its close-up on the Internet. A lot of it didn't last any longer than it took for somebody to hire a bunch of guys with scrub brushes.