SARAH WERKMEISTER takes a look at the eye-popping work of New York-based art group GRAFFITI RESEARCH LAB.

Graffiti Research Lab, based in New York, are a group of people looking at ways in which graffiti can be amalgamated with open source technology. They’re representative of a new brand of graffiti activism striking the globe. The first time I experienced them was in Rotterdam where they were using laser technology to project on a huge building right next to the Erasmus Bridge. All the locals were getting right into it, and throwing up their tags, political messages, pretty pictures and more. Someone even wrote their PIN number. On the opposite side of the building, they had LED grids spelling out letters going across the whole length/width of the building. The funny thing was that Art Rotterdam (promoting “high” art) were the sponsors, and many of the participants (dealers, artists, curators etc) had a go. 

Back at the start of last year a bunch of kids in Boston were arrested for “suspected terrorism” because they made LED placards of Ignignokt from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and put them up around the city … the police found them and they were mistaken for bombs, hence the creators’ arrests. These people didn’t have much to do with Graffiti Research Lab, but they have been cited as having been influenced by them.

Graffiti Research Lab (GRL) started in New York and now has branches in Vienna, Amsterdam and Mexico, though there are even more advocates worldwide. In March they did something for the Adelaide Festival where they just threw up some LED lights, and showed off their Laser Tags. Hopefully we’ll have something in Brisbane sometime in the future. Their most recent exhibition was at MOMA, where people drew awesome stuff with on the interior museum walls along the lines of “fuck this museum”, thereby taking ephemeral and interactive art to a whole new level.

If you want to start your own graffiti research lab, you can even make your own website through www.graffitiresearchlab.com/index_how2.html, which features a quirky animation-style DIY guide somewhat in the style of adbusters, but without the putz.

They’ve also created something called Ghetto Matrix, quite similar to the concept of painting with light (you know, when you take a photo without a flash in the dark and all those lights are moving). They’ve taken it a step further with their own DIY bullet time camera rigs, which allow time to slow down or speed up (see The Matrix or Michel Gondry’s video for Björk’s Army of Me). The tutorial instructions are on their website.

Although many may dispute this medium as legit graf, it does build on the foundations of graffiti to form a new kind of visual activism and visual recognition. There’s heaps more that GRL do that I can’t squeeze in here, but you can go check their out their website and maybe invest in some lasers and try doing it yourself.

GRAFFITI RESEARCH LAB – www.graffitiresearchlab.com

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