Evan Roth Is Turning Graffiti Into Code: Video
Posted by Alex_Pasternack on Thursday, Jul 22, 2010
Evan Roth’s endless open-source efforts to push graffiti into the future isn’t just creating shiny 3D images for massive viral internet consumption. They’re building a digital archive for graffiti.
Graffiti Analysis is an extensive ongoing study in the motion of graffiti. Custom software designed for graffiti writers creates visualizations of the often unseen motion involved in the creation of a tag. Motion data is recorded, analyzed and archived in a free and open database, 000000book.com, where writers can share analytical representations of their hand styles.
Graffiti Analysis 2.0 is an open source project that is available online for free in OSX, Windows and Linux. Graffiti writers are invited to capture and share their own tags, and computer programmers are invited to create new applications and visualizations of the resulting data. What Martha Cooper did for archiving graffiti on film, and Chalfant/Silver did for archiving graffiti in video, Graffiti Analysis intends to do for archiving graffiti in code. The project aims to build the world’s largest archive of graffiti motion and bring together two seemingly disparate communities that share an interest hacking systems, whether found in code or in the city.
The applications for graffiti motion – captured in something called Graffiti Markup Language (GML) files – are many and awesome, including Laser Tag, Sculptures and EyeWriter, a system that enables people to draw using only eye-tracking software.
And because the project is open-source, anyone can use the data to build their own apps. Imagine being able to copy a tag in Brooklyn and paste it in Berlin, or use graffiti to choreograph a robot dance.
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