graffiti

Microsoft seems to be taking to the streets to promote its upcoming Surface tablet.

Eagle-eyed residents of New York City have discovered new street artwork gracing the walls of certain buildings, as reported by The Verge. The colorful art depicts the word Surface in a tablet-shaped rectangle with a keyboard below.

A Facebook user named Surface Evangelist posted one photo of the artwork appearing on an unnamed street, while a Twitter user named Amanda uploaded another photo of a billboard-sized Surface ad on a building near East 2nd Street.

CNET contacted Microsoft, but the company said it's not commenting … Read more

We live in a world full of LED lights, but the everyday illuminated fixture simply can't inspire like the Water Light Graffiti art wall.

Created by French artist Antonin Fourneau and his team at the Digitalarti Artlab studio in Paris, this piece proves that when you mix modern technology with traditional art, something quite compelling can happen.… Read more

If you think graffiti is an eyesore, you probably won't be downloading Graffiti Art Windows 7 Theme from Windows7Theme. But if you see graffiti as art that reflects and enhances the urban streetscape, this free package of 10 high-resolution, high-quality desktop wallpaper images can do something much the same to your PC, without requiring a single can of spray paint. These 1,920x1,200-pixel wide-screen images celebrate the colorful chaos of graffiti art, and they're great, representative examples of the genre. As the name implies, Graffiti Art Windows 7 Theme is for Windows 7 systems.

The free theme … Read more

Today we're putting dots on everything!

Expect to see tons of new domain extensions crop up, like .app or .baby. Hundreds of companies, including Google, Amazon and Apple, have applied to oversee new domains. If there's more than one application for a word (Google and Johnson & Johnson are battling for .baby), then the two companies will have to duke it out or it'll go to an auction. There are also some controversial ones, like .sucks. You can really see how .sucks can, well, suck for brands. Hard to see a useful purpose for that domain aside … Read more

A new music video for a U.K.-based hip-hop artist showcases a fun idea: talking (and moving) graffiti.

The video, by British design outfit Paintshop Studio, features, in the words of Paintshop's blog, "animated graffiti rappers, created entirely in spray paint and brought to life by painting and repainting key elements."

Now, whether the idea of talking (and moving) graffiti is fun or horrifying depends on your point of view. Imagine if every tag you walked past in the city shouted the name of the tagger at you. (Then again, someone like street artist Banksy could no doubt work amusing, and even profound, wonders with this--as could a group of experimental poets, composers, and urbanists.)

Of course, this particular graffiti mural is confined to a video. But it does make us think. What if you combined this idea with QR tags and augmented reality? We've seen similar things before. Artists have "hi-jacked" billboards using iPads and AR, and damaged murals have been "restored" using QR tags. It might be pretty sweet if you could hold your smartphone or tablet up to a piece of graffiti or a mural and watch it come alive.… Read more

It seems a mural sponsored by the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, as a deterrent to graffiti, wound up attracting a little instead. But someone came up with an interesting temporary fix for the defacement.

A tipster named Jason informed street-art site Wooster Collective that a giant QR code had been placed over the offending, spray-painted tag.

And when passersby scan the code with their smartphones, they're served up an image of the original, undamaged mural, along with information about its origins.

That's a nice idea. But in describing the fix as "temporary" a few paragraphs … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Despite my jaded, bitter facade, there are times when I am easily impressed. Now is one of those times. A new, graffiti-inspired line from iWave is turning my head, and all the company did was splash a flashy exterior on to some otherwise pretty standard products.

The products in the Urban Collection include iPod/iPhone cases, earbuds, headphones, and speakers, which range in price from $9.99 to $39.99. Such budget pricing doesn't bode well for sound quality, but they sure do look purty! I'm especially fond of the speakers pictured above. Look for them on … Read more

Whiteboard Collaborative Drawing is a free app that turns your iPhone or iPod Touch's screen into a small, shared drawing space, like a whiteboard or sketchpad. The simple touch-screen interface lets you choose the width of your "marker" (from a fine, pencil-like point to a wide spray-paint-style brush), with six different colors plus an eraser. You just tap on the screen to begin drawing, and you tap with two fingers to bring back the settings screen.

Whiteboard Collaborative Drawing becomes even more useful over Wi-Fi, as users on two different devices on the same network can draw … Read more

q&a James Powderly didn't trek from New York City to Beijing during the 2008 Olympics to watch table tennis. The artist was plotting to laser-beam a billboard-size, pro-Tibet message at the Bird's Nest Stadium. Instead, he spent six days locked up and interrogated by Chinese police under conditions he likens to torture. He was joined by other American would-be protestors sentenced to prison without being charged of a crime, then released early following U.S. pressure.

The Graffiti Research Lab co-founder and former engineer has helped pioneer open source, digital graffiti techniques, like L.A.S.E.R. tag projections of words and icons onto public walls, as well as LED bulb "throwies" that stick to surfaces to spell out messages in light.

Originally Powderly was invited to participate in a show at the National Art Museum of China, until he says organizers, fearing political controversy, kicked him out. Instead, he collaborated with Students for a Free Tibet (SFT).

Powderly says his high-tech gear--including a cell phone, green laser, laser printer, laptop, camera, tripods--may have tipped off Chinese authorities. And he suspects that if Twitter stops working in China, you might blame him and his collaborators.

Q: The last time we were in touch, you'd mentioned the upcoming Green (Chinese) Lantern project, which you didn't detail for obvious reasons. What happened? How did Chinese authorities find out what you were planning to do? Powderly: When I entered the country on the 15th of August I had a cell phone that might have already been compromised. It had already been used by protesters in the country...We don't know. They weren't telling.

It's safe to say I'm much more like Dr. Strangelove than like James Bond. I stick out like a sore thumb in Beijing. I'm about a foot taller than everybody. I'm wearing a fedora, camos, and sleeveless vest...

These people were still kind of bumbling but resourced and numerically outnumbered adversaries, in terms of the Chinese secret police. There are just so many of them and they're working with so much citizen support, meaning there are 300,000 people in the city just looking constantly and reporting, from taxi drivers to people on the street, undercover cops, policemen in uniforms, soldiers.

Whatever clued them into us, by the afternoon of the 18th I was being tailed by a woman. I spotted her, but I'm in a city of 20 million people. No way they're on me, I hadn't done anything. I was literally at the Wal-Mart superstore buying supplies..I doubted what I was seeing...

What happened next? When did you know for sure? How were you arrested? Powderly: I spent the day of the 17th scouting locations, buying a new laser printer. I went to kind of a safe house to build this laser stencil thing...They'd snuck a new laser in to me and I'd snuck in LED throwies for the LED banner for another group of activists...

I went to Tiananmen Square to scout that location because we'd planned to do two projection events. If we got away with the first one at the Olympic stadium, then we were gonna do the second one in Tiananmen Square...We were gonna project "Free Tibet" or "Tibet will be free" or "6/4/1989."

What worked and what didn't go forward? Powderly: None of them worked. We did nothing. We were arrested and detained in China...for doing nothing except for thinking about it.

On the 18th...I did my one and only laser projection that evening out the window on some torn-down buildings...way out in the outskirts of Beijing, literally the last stop of the "One" line...It worked better than any had before, and I'd come up with a new technique for making the stencils to do transparencies with a normal laser printer.

I'd printed out one test message, a little computer inside joke, just the words: "Free Beer." It's a quote from a renowned hacker (Richard Stallman) that refers to free software...… Read more