Hi.
join me in shaving your head, quitting your job and taking a cross country #soloyolo road trip extravaganza ….
join me in shaving your head, quitting your job and taking a cross country #soloyolo road trip extravaganza ….
An interactive map plus analysis submitted for Analyzing Cultural Data, Spring 2015, City University of New York. Professor Lev Manovich. Map via CartoDB.
At 103rd street and Lexington Avenue, there is a mural by the renowned street artist James De La Vega. It greets me every time I exit the subway. It is a mural of a woman, Celia Cruz, with the title "La Reina Celia." There are other murals like it around the neighborhood, by De La Vega and others. In my attempt to create a very human data set, I circled my neighborhood collecting images of man made, semi-permanent markings in paint, marker, and occasionally tile. Some of them are comfortably classifiable as graffiti. Other marks are almost impossible to categorize. Taken as an aggregate, they reveal a tableau of different human interactions with the built environment.
Over the course of a few square blocks, I attempted to capture every mark I could find. This was difficult, and I had over a hundred images in two blocks. After reviewing and re-walking the territory, a few major categories came to mind: tag, political, mural, decor, and other. If you hover over each geotagged marker on the map above, you will see what mark type is below. Clicking the orange map dot will reveal an image of the mark.
Originally, I was tempted to give each image a numerical value on a scale to represent a spectrum from "decorative" to "destructive." A tag, the most widely known instance of graffiti artfully put that idea into perspective. Who is to say that a graffiti mark, technically an act of vandalism, isn't also artistic?
Below are a few of my favorite images. Each tag fills its "canvas" so uniquely that in the best instances, both feel like art objects . The second to last two images on the right underscore an interesting tension that I discovered trying to categorize graffiti: intentionality. In the image with the bike, blue paint marks the neighboring doorway, no less the product of human intervention than the tag that prompted me to snap the picture. On the far right, the crass, colorful advertisements for iced tea seem much more intrusive to me than the subtle tag on the doorstep. The ads, however, were placed in the window by the proprietor, and are therefore an act of intentionality that we support and defend, as opposed to an act of vandalism.
Some marks were overtly political, such as the two pictured below (right and center). Spanish Harlem has a long history of political street art. Other marks were subtle, lighthearted or funny, seemingly belonging to "political" and "other," such as the mark on the news stand below.
Art we all one?
By far the most interesting category of mark is "other." As a catch-all category, it shows that every system of categorization is fallible and contingent on the biases of the researcher. It also reveals the playful, complex nature of human artistic expression.
The three images below are an excerpt of the marks categorized as "other." On the left, the police sergeant's parking space caused me to stop and record it in a way which, for example, marks related to street work, electrical maintenance, or other municipal services did not. Similarly, the church's mark on the right felt beyond a decorative mark (classified as "decor"). Both of these marks represent an authority, embedded in this community. The police mark, on the one hand, operate above the threatened repercussions of vandalism and defacing public property (this parking space is in the middle of the sidewalk next to the precinct). This mark feels mundane, a foregone conclusion of authority. The church mark, on the other hand, seems similarly to operate outside of what could reasonably be considered the regulations on public space. Especially to commemorate a unique instance in time: the church's founding. Both marks would feel different in a different medium.
Finally, the mark pictured in the center is an example of how graffiti, and by extension public art, is unknowable to the audience who experiences it. This lighthearted mark could very well be considered a tag, political, decor, and other. The general public lives amongst this autographed environment without any knowledge of the original artist's intentions. As something which is semi-permanent, yet ephemeral, graffiti marks are a poignant medium to express subjective messages.
Finally, of course, the murals. In some ways, these are the most straightforward category, though the content of each mural is variable. There is also a political act in their very scale, claiming whole expanses of visual real estate and the attention of passersby. The walls of this city are not just the realm of real estate developers, they suggest. On the other hand, the fact that murals are socially sanctioned (often even commissioned) dilutes their politics as street art.
As instances of cultural data, graffiti are information rich. They benefit from the traditional research methods of art history as well as insights from cultural and urban studies. Any attempt to categorize the intent of the artists' is inherently problematic. Though they resist quantification, the following metrics resulted from my research.
Of the 61 images mapped 30 are tags, 11 are mural, 10 are other, 5 are decor, and 5 are political. Their distribution is variable, however with noticeably fewer marks within a block of the police station. Please feel free to explore further.
The Spirit of East Harlem Interactive (link)
History of artist James De La Vega:
Uptown Arts Walk (Link)
