Graffiti, logo design and synchronicity
I’m sure this must happen to other bloggers, too; over the course of a few days, from completely unrelated sources, a set of posts on a subject of interest to you that isn’t your normal blogging subject will arrive in your RSS reader, as if orchestrated from afar.
But I’m still too woolly-headed with a cold to make some sweeping statements about synchronicity and the Zeitgeist acting in some emergent harmony … not to mention writing anything coherent and interesting about science fiction literature (with two pending book reviews stewing at the back of my brain already).
So instead, you get a round-up post on graffiti.
First up, via Anders Sandberg, comes Graffiti Archaeology - a Flash-based site that examines the accretion and interaction over time of pieces of graffiti in certain locations. Nicely made - I generally loathe Flash sites, but this is the sort of thing it actually does really well.
Next, this is what happens when a professor of psychology and culture starts looking at graffiti with the perspective of an outsider trying to understand a body of work within the context it was made in - Bill Benzon’s series of three posts [link to first in series] at The Valve feature not just images of graffiti, but examinations of the settings and contexts within which they appear. I’ve been fascinated by graffiti culture for years, but I’ve never found myself asking as many questions about it as Benzon. [The image above is clipped from Benzon's article.]
[As with much of what I read at The Valve - a group blog to which the wry and subtle Adam Roberts is a contributor - I can't be entirely sure how serious an article this is (they're way too cunning with their language sometimes) - but joke or not, it's fascinating stuff.]
And finally, Matthew Ingram’s piece at Stylus Magazine examines the history of the band logo, which has conceptual roots in graffiti as well as political activism and typography of a more pedestrian commercial type. Nice to see a couple of obscure bands that I’m a fan of raise their heads in the images included - a VCTB gold star to the person who guesses which two I mean! Answers in the comments field, if you want to play.
In the meantime, I will post something related to science fiction as soon as circumstances permit. Thanks for your patience.
