Graffiti

Okay so, I had a lecture about Graffiti and there were a lot of interesting points raised about whether Graffiti is an art form and such and the numerous Graffiti artists who are trying to send out a different message to change how Graffiti is perceived by the public.

The way we see Graffiti has changed so much that it has actually become a point of interest even within tourism and advertising. You've probably seen a few adverts on the TV that use Graffiti such as the Vauxhall Corsa ad (If you haven't seen it you can watch the ad here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPWbnuNXqD0) but I wanted to find something a little more different and I found this.



Because this advert is for a medical firm and about living a more healthy life, to use something like Graffiti to represent that seems a little risky but I think it worked beautifully. It really brings together that sense of doing what you do best and changing it into something good and it really does show a different side to how graffiti can be used.

Moving onto some of the work processes that some artists go through to create their work. This artist was mentioned during the lecture but I just wanted to highlight his extraodinary way of creating Graffiti which is through cleaning surfaces. Paul Curtis otherwise known as "Moose" creates his pieces in a reverse graffiti method which is basically by cleaning dirt and grime from surfaces to create images. This obviously shows a more environmental approach to graffiti. Here is a very interesting video showing just how he does it, why and the impact it has on the general public about how dirty our world really is.



How does this relate to my course? Well, even in the graffiti world there is game related works. I had a little search around and picked out some favourites I'll talk you through.

As I mentioned previously, graffiti can work or be seen as an advert for example this GTA graffiti work on this wall below. The placement of this almost gives the illusion of a billboard and has the same effects because it's in the view of the public eye.

 

Another clever placement of graffiti I found was this piece of the retro Mario next to the green pipe. It's a more fun approach as a pose to the GTA one but it still demonstrates the effects of placement. Gotta admit though, this one is so smart!

Graffiti can be found in many games but some games incrporate graffiti in a very smart way for example, a recent game i've played called Alice Madness Returns uses graffiti to gives the player hints and directions to items and even characters. Spicy Horse which is the name of the one of the game developers along side EA games also appears as a piece of graffiti. This leads back to that sense of placement and advertising I've mentioned previously. It seems that there's room to advertise even in the gaming world.