The Screen on the Street: Convergence and Agonic Coincidences between Graffiti and New Media Objects
Filmmaker, researcher and professor in the Faculty of Social Communication at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR)
This article examines how graffiti converges with the information society cultural practices. The unreadable, complex, designed typographies known to graffiti writers as tags are global visual codes. Graffiti artists are incorporating modes of production, and performing operations, distinctive to Internet's imaginary. They are creating cultural objects convergent with Lev Manovich's new media objects principles. Using the notions of the agonic and of digitalia, the essay analyses how this movement between online and offline practices is enacted. Through graffiti, information is aestheticized. Stencils, murals, and most of today's graffiti art forms can be seen as portraying the information culture aesthetics meticulously developed by Manovich. Graffiti inhabits digital media in an unconscious and agonic manner. In turn, it organizes space and turns street wall data and structure into a flâneur-user experience.
Accepted in: October 2007
Published in: December 2007
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