"The street finds its own use for things"

February 17, 2014 9:55 PM

Graffiti: 40 Years of Hacking New York City. "City as Canvas is a reminder that this is, in a very literal sense, criminal artwork." [Via]
posted by homunculus (4 comments total)

A short story by the author: Paintwork

"Paintwork is a near-futuristic story of a virtual-reality graffiti artist specializing in defacing and reprogramming QR codes who is confronted with a series of impossibly fast takedowns of his latest series. He must find the artist who is dissing his works while struggling to face the validity of their critiques."
posted by homunculus at 9:55 PM on February 17, 2014

Highlights: Martin Wong Graffiti Collection
posted by homunculus at 10:24 PM on February 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

I hated that jackass Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters, and while I agree with many of the points this article makes, it still rubs me the wrong way. While Graham's comes at it from a programmer perspective, trying to add High Artistic Talent to his shitty pile of Lisp code, at least this comes at it from a fictionalized futuristic ideal and writes from more of an artist standpoint.

I wrote and deleted a few times why I hated the comparison, and I can't seem to nail down the finer points. Mostly, I think its a stupid superficial comparison thats deeply unfair to painters.
posted by yeahwhatever at 12:44 AM on February 18, 2014

Live from the Graffiti Underground: Decades before street artists like Banksy could ignite an Internet firestorm and fetch millions, three guys with a video camera and a stack of VHS tapes set out to share the gritty story of NYC graffiti.
posted by homunculus at 1:01 PM on March 13, 2014