Graffiti has existed since ancient times, with surviving examples of this ancient art from the Mayans, Ancient Greeks and Romans. Even Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo and Raphael were said to have left their names at the remains of the emperor Nero's villa in Rome. I'm not a fan of mindless tagging and bad lettering that you often see alongside railways, but a well done piece of urban artwork can lift the spirits on a rainy day.

Image: Graffiti by notorious British artist Banksy.I lived in Bristol throughout the 1990s and Banksy's art was part of my urban landscape. You never knew what might lie around the next corner, and he made my walk to work a little more bearable in the mornings.

It's a hard path to follow, with dead of night sessions while skirting the law. I wish there were more designated graffiti spaces that local crews could share. Misery is a Kiwi design diva who, with her quirky characters, 'nasty with some fruit salad' style and canny business head, has turned the art of graffiti into an international brand. The TMD crew consisting of Phat1, Exist, Ryze, Deus and Askew won the 2006 Write4Gold World Finals in Germany, and other names from a recent Kiwi graffiti exhibition included Opto, mephisto Jones, gasp, Pest5, PMT, and SP12.

If airbrush art is beyond your skills you can always grab your knitting needles or crochet hook. Knit Tagging is basically Graffiti with Yarn. Urban knitters are making wild and woolly creations for random placement in public spaces. Cue pictures of lampposts, traffic signs and fire hydrants at the wonderful Knitta Please, all snuggled up in their toasty knitted cozies.

Knitta call themselves "a tag crew of knitters, bombing the inner city with vibrant, stitched works of art, wrapped around everything from beer bottles on easy nights to public monuments and utility poles on more ambitious outings." These Knit Wits include PolyCotN, P-Knitty and The Knotorious N.I.T. with most of this bunch of Knitterati in their early to mid-twenties.

The Knitta MySpace page shows there is a thriving community across the planet, with pictures of work fresh from the needles on their Flickr feed. This form of hardcore urban crafting has also reached the Antipodes, with Wo! Magazine covering the work of the Stitch and Bitch collective in Sydney earlier this year. Kiwis inspired to knit the Spiky Red Thing some stamen warmers can find knitting tutorials at Threadbanger.

The Graffiti Research Lab in the USA have come up with another form of urban overlay that Coolhunting calls "reconfigurable, night compatible, digital graffiti". They brighten up the dark depths of the inner city with a sprinkle of pretty lights, made from tiny Light Emitting Diodes or LEDs.

"LED Throwies are an inexpensive way to add color to any ferromagnetic surface in your neighborhood. A Throwie consists of a lithium battery, a 10mm diffused LED and a rare-earth magnet taped together. Throw it up high and in quantity to impress your friends and city officials." - Graffiti Research Labs

If you want to make some yourself for an exhibition or party there's an Instructables article on how to make throwies. You can also watch a video clip from the Maker fair. Other cool projects from Graffiti Research Labs include the L.A.S.E.R. project which is on a much larger scale than Throwies. The Lab technicians hacked a projector, camera and computer together to track the movements of a green laser. The result is huge projected blue graffiti lettering on the side of a Rotterdam building.

I've been wanting to try it after watching the video clip at Engadget and think of it every time I see Auckland's Sky Tower. The great thing about many of the Lab projects is that they are open source. As Art Krush reports, their non-profit arts and technology studio Eyebeam provides DIY instructions for all of their innovations. I can't wait to start tinkering!

25/10/07

As well as being TBI's strategist, Helen Baxter a.k.a. MsBehaviour runs dance-music label TMet Recordings, 3D animation company Mohawk Media and has a fortnightly slot on National Radio called 'Virtual World'.