Notes on Graffiti
by A.C. Frabetti
A graffiti enthusiast under the Flickr name Satori has documented graffiti and street art in Cincinnati. Click the above image to visit his Flickr site.
Photo courtesy of Satori.
A graffiti enthusiast under the Flickr name Satori has documented graffiti and street art in Cincinnati. Click the above image to visit his Flickr site.
Photo courtesy of Satori.
In a renowned 1999 experiment by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons at Harvard University, viewers were asked to count the times a team of white-shirted players threw a ball to each other while ignoring the efforts of a similar team in black shirts. The final count was actually irrelevant. The test aimed to see how many viewers were aware of a silly intervention: a person in a gorilla suit wandered across the middle of the screen, pounded his chest, and then exited. Half of the viewers, in fact, did not see the gorilla, even though it had passed through their field of vision. The highly quoted results have since been used for the analysis of diverse phenomenon, from the blindness of cell phone users to the inattention of people under the influence of alcohol.
The goal of writing (the term used for the creation of graffiti) on public spaces is to gain recognition for the 'tag' (the particular moniker of the graffiti artist, rendered in his or her unique style). But due to selective attention, graffiti is something that the general public simply doesn't see—'see' defined as more than having a quick glimpse of something. For example, the bright burst of paint along the highway wall in the form of mutated lettering is (for the average person) dismissed as vandalism before it is properly observed. The colors may make the work stand out and be lightly acknowledged, but the form, tag name, etc. will rarely register; the work is not considered in its individuality. If people do not see the graffiti on its own terms—the particular artists' work as an evolution of the style's aesthetic—then they cannot be expected to appreciate it. Any discussion of graffiti must begin with this simple fact: it is not looked at by anyone save a small minority, despite the expectation of the people making it.
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