Audio.
10-02-2005, 06:28 PM
Aight this is an essay, that Nekro wrote... Yes its the myspace nekro thats a part of the group. Some of you peeps/kids/writers/toys/kings/posers need to read. I know its long, but its very well written. Enjoy - drop him a note and let him know what you think about it.
Graffiti
Art to some yet crime to others, from its birth to its current state. The history of graffiti will be covered as will its aspects of styles, attitudes by society around the world and of the graffiti writers, to ask the question that many wonder on why someone would risk doing an illegal activity to place ones moniker to be seen by the public. Graffiti’s ancient origins from ancient cities up to more recent times during the 1960’s and to the present will be looked into for their historical impact. A look into the life of the real graffiti writers based on who they really are and not who they are commonly thought to be and the break up of different graffiti styles from the basic four forms: tag, throw-up, piece, and production. Many do not know what specialized items are used to inscribe names and tools that have been engineered for the sole purpose of achieving the alias in the most permanent ways.
Even though many associate graffiti being a new wave, it has been around since ancient times, from the first time man learned to draw and leave the written word.
The word graffiti means to place deliberate markings on private or public property without the owners own consent. The word graffiti originates from the Greek “graphein†meaning “to write.†The definition can be traced back to ancient cave paintings but many come to conclude that modern graffiti “vandalism.†It existed in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus. There, oldest known graffiti marking is written on an ancient walkway announcing prostitution in the area. Many other ancient forms have been found all over the world, from ancient Mayan ruins in Tikal Yucatan to Viking graffiti in Rome. Many of these markings include curses, love declarations, and even “beware of dog†inscriptions. In many ancient Roman sites there are Latin inscriptions of insults and political views, this has helped many archeologists find insights into ancient society of the time of the graffiti.
The 1960’s saw great change in society and one of them was the evolution of graffiti. It no longer was rare among areas. It began to grow at an alarming rate due to the invention of the spray paint can. Edward Seymour first created the spray paint can during 1949 in only aluminum colors. In time during the 1950’s gangs were reported to use spray paint in the Los Angeles area. Over time spray paint graffiti was gang related up until the 1960’s when the “Philly Wicked Style†was born. The Style consisted of large stylized letters with quotations stars that latter evolved into the most basic form of graffiti the tag. Philadelphia is the city were many regard the most recent form of graffiti to be born in. It was pioneered by the mystery graffiti writers “cornbread†and “cool earl.†They are the two men considered to be the first to write graffiti for seeing who can get their alias name everywhere. Others began to copy them and the graffiti writer “top cat†took this to New York City. There others saw this and began to write their “alias,†but it did not reach its popularity until Demetrius a Greek American foot messenger began to write graffiti. He called himself “Taki183,†Taki being a nickname and 183 for the street he lived on. Being a foot messenger he was able to travel great distances and place his alias everywhere he went. In time the New York Times caught attention to this name and did an article on it, leading to the city seeing it and created a an explosion of others copying him with their alias and street numbers. In time it spread through the streets and became an urban movement, where it was spread even further by the media and rap music to a world wide level during the 1980’s.
Over the years graffiti has grown out of its simplistic roots and into a world wide community spanning all races and corners of the globe. Growing with that is also the variety of thousands of styles from each individual. Today graffiti has reached its panicle level. Spreading to every continent populated by man. It is said that in just the United States it costs $8 Billion per year to clean up. 35% of all property vandalism in the United States is graffiti related according to the Buroe of Justice. In contrast to the common misconception only under 10% of graffiti are gang related and 78% “tagger†related while 5% is generic and 7% other. A sharp misconception of graffiti in the United States is that it’s the minority low-income adolescent committing the graffiti crimes but in fact it is 50-70% committed by suburban middle class adolescents of the 16-18 age groups. In the United States it is estimated that 60% of all graffiti writers are Caucasian and 30% Hispanic while 8% is African American and the other 2% is other. Fewer than 2% of all graffiti writers are female according to surveys done by pro-graffiti paint companies. Most graffiti writers are within 12-21 year old age groups but it is not rare for a 25 or older graffiti writers to exist. It has been known to recent studies to be actually addictive, some graffiti writers have been known to choose graffiti as their new “fix†powerful drugs like cocaine. Many companies have seen graffiti as a new market and have begun to capitalize on it; many new brands of paint have been created for the graffiti writer in mind in Europe named Montana, Belton, and Blubber paint.
Many people have the misconceptions of graffiti being a mindless act of rebellion. But in reality the movement is very deep concerning, rules, style, balance, and respect. Graffiti is no longer the minority but instead neighbors in you area. Constantly evolving the style and revolutionizing the graffiti movement one by one. But the average person has no idea of the different styles and varieties of writers and their works. Graffiti breaks down into two main forms, gang-graffiti and tagger “hip-hop†graffiti. Most people associate graffiti into all being gang related but the reality is 78% is the “hip-hop†related graffiti. While gang related graffiti is only done for the purpose of marking territory and recruitment and confined to their territory, tagger related graffiti’s goal is to be everywhere and be seen by the public. Tagger graffiti is all about the fame within their sub-culture on who can have their name up the most. Due to that, that form of graffiti is much more common and visible than the gang related kind. Tagger graffiti is broken up into four different forms. The “tag†is the most common and least appealing and is basically handwriting with a style and decorations. It serves only the purpose of having your name placed somewhere and is not meant to be “pretty.†This form is the most common and is what everyone thinks of when the word graffiti comes up. It is also the oldest and most basic form. The next level up is the “throw-up.†The throw-up is letter work in a bubble letter like form usually consisting of two to three colors an outline and a fill color. The lettering is simple to read and very easy to reproduce without consuming much time, most take under ten minutes to produce. This form came after the tag but has been used now for just putting your name in places that are very hard to reach or dangerous and very visible to the public. It was overshadowed by the more complex works so it needed to be moved into riskier places to still be seen as respectable to other graffiti writers. From this form comes the slang term to “bombing†which means to go out and paint an area with a large quantity of tags and throw-ups. It was given that name due to the idea that those styles are not meant to be good looking but very destructive, thus giving it the name of “bombing.†The next level up is the “piece†short for masterpiece. This form is where many could begin to consider it art, it is very complex and deals with many artistic aesthetics like color, balance, composition, and technique. These are usually not seen by the public because it is very hard to produce something like this without being caught since it takes three to eight hours. This can be found in creeks tunnels and other out of public sight spots hidden around cities. The whole purpose of painting one would be to show off ones personal skills to other graffiti writers and is considered better than tags and throw-ups. Some places have legal ones painted in larger cities. The piece can be broken up into three styles. The “wild style†which consists of a maze of letter work and decorations like arrows, yet keeps its balance and flow. The “NY old school†style is a semi-complex but very detailed colorful and balanced like the wild style. The newer and latest style is 3D pieces. These receive the utmost respect for their very artistic, complex and extremely difficult to produce due the idea that it has to look as if it has true depth on a flat surface. A lot of graffiti artist have been able to produce things that look actually real and hanging off the wall but in reality it is just a 2D painting. The ultimate form of graffiti is the production, this is when a group of graffiti writers come together to paint a large spot with multiple pieces, characters of the theme, and a themed background. These take hours if not days to produce and are seen by the public artistic and acceptable, they are basically murals done with spray paint. Most of these are done on buildings and walls which are legal, thus giving the graffiti writers all the time necessary to paint it without the problem of being caught. They usually paint the mural in theme with the business as a deal with the owners of the wall. These styles are the building blocks on which all other graffiti writers build up on and begin to evolve it further.
With most things comes ethic and rules and few know of the rules that many graffiti writers place on one another. Many graffiti writers have morals when it comes to where he is painting. Many graffiti writers leave alone actual homes of people, churches or places of worship and small businesses. Yet they do target large corporations and government property largely due to the fact that most of the sub-culture of graffiti writers are against government control and against large corporate entities. Many have the idea that corruption is growing amongst the government and people are being abused by the system. One graffiti writer once said that if he put up his work on a billboard officials would call it an eye soar for advertising himself, but then aren’t big companies adds everywhere just as bad, he said that at least they had a common respect for certain things while big business only cares to generate profits and everything and everyone else comes behind that. A graffiti writer named Sonik wrote “There are academics galore who are ready and willing with theses and desertions linking rap to griot culture, spirituals, blues music and toasting, but as yet there are few art theorists who are willing to trace a path in graffiti with hieroglyphics, Persian miniatures, Chinese calligraphy, Fin de Siecle lettering, soviet posters, and pop art. Instead, what graffiti attracts are criminologists and sociologists linking graffiti with broken window neighborhood decline theory and ritual transgression in young males.â€
Graffiti writers are extremely resourceful with the ability to use any tool available and even create everything from complex letters to photo-realistic characters using a wide array of spray paint cans, caps and techniques. Through cunning many graffiti artists have been able to keep mysterious yet have crafted a laser sharp assault on society. Graffiti writers have been known to use rocks to inscribe their names on glass and even use glass etching acids and put them into pens to write on glass. Another homemade device is filling up a coke bottle with dark ink and sticking a pin hole on the cap, thus being able to leak out ink to do tags on surfaces. Anything that can be used to write with will be used to tag, its been known that some people have emptied out deodorant sticks and filled them with ink then glued dry erase board erasers as nips and glued on creating a extra wide marker. There are a wide variety of paint brands that are imported from Europe that are at a much higher standard for spray paint. It is very thick in cover, very smooth and they have a much wider array of colors to choose from. Those paint brands are specifically made for the graffiti writer in mind, and they also produce a large amount of spray paint caps for different uses. The caps specialize on different aspects of spray you need. The caps differ from having calligraphy style strokes to extremely wide sprays ranging from 14-20 fingers wide. Nicknamed fat caps for their very wide spray widths and are used a lot for throw-ups due to their speed of filling large areas quickly. There are also caps that are very thing in width for detailed work and shading that have widths down to a finger nail. Those are used a lot for painting pieces and characters that require very small details and clean crisp lines. Both of those cap styles have variations of hardness of sprays, the harder spraying the better for solid crisp lines while the soft spraying ones are for 3D work and detailed shading. Even with these caps it still takes a massive amount of eye hand coordination to be able to achieve clean and well crafted works and years of technique to master the control of the paint flowing from the can to the wall with the same feel one would have on using a pencil on paper.
Whether it is called art or destruction, graffiti has been around civilization since man could write and will not cease to exist with the coming changes in time. Instead it will only be reborn only in different forms. One graffiti writer said that graffiti would always be a problem to society until they begin to accept it more and see it as an art form only then will it flourish as murals and abolish the tags which they so much hate. In a graffiti writers perspective he wants to society to work with them and not against him, most graffiti writers would give up the tags and throw-ups for the more artistic murals if they could have move places and opportunities for them but our culture in America wants to abolish it and that only creates more rage among the graffiti writers to destroy things. But on the other end the property owners see it as all one in the same, pure vandalism and it does cost cities millions to remove it and has become plague to many officials. It is here that people are fought over and divided into three categories. The one who chooses to understand it, see it for a deeper meaning and side with the graffiti writer. The one who does not understand it but doesn’t acknowledge it nor hate it, and the one who has disgust for it and chooses to eradicate it. Those three will decide the fate of the current evolution of graffiti and it is up to others to come to a conclusion of the controversial idea whether its vandalism or an artistic expression outlet.
- Nekro MCB -
that's what the fuck is up! (y)
Graffiti
Art to some yet crime to others, from its birth to its current state. The history of graffiti will be covered as will its aspects of styles, attitudes by society around the world and of the graffiti writers, to ask the question that many wonder on why someone would risk doing an illegal activity to place ones moniker to be seen by the public. Graffiti’s ancient origins from ancient cities up to more recent times during the 1960’s and to the present will be looked into for their historical impact. A look into the life of the real graffiti writers based on who they really are and not who they are commonly thought to be and the break up of different graffiti styles from the basic four forms: tag, throw-up, piece, and production. Many do not know what specialized items are used to inscribe names and tools that have been engineered for the sole purpose of achieving the alias in the most permanent ways.
Even though many associate graffiti being a new wave, it has been around since ancient times, from the first time man learned to draw and leave the written word.
The word graffiti means to place deliberate markings on private or public property without the owners own consent. The word graffiti originates from the Greek “graphein†meaning “to write.†The definition can be traced back to ancient cave paintings but many come to conclude that modern graffiti “vandalism.†It existed in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus. There, oldest known graffiti marking is written on an ancient walkway announcing prostitution in the area. Many other ancient forms have been found all over the world, from ancient Mayan ruins in Tikal Yucatan to Viking graffiti in Rome. Many of these markings include curses, love declarations, and even “beware of dog†inscriptions. In many ancient Roman sites there are Latin inscriptions of insults and political views, this has helped many archeologists find insights into ancient society of the time of the graffiti.
The 1960’s saw great change in society and one of them was the evolution of graffiti. It no longer was rare among areas. It began to grow at an alarming rate due to the invention of the spray paint can. Edward Seymour first created the spray paint can during 1949 in only aluminum colors. In time during the 1950’s gangs were reported to use spray paint in the Los Angeles area. Over time spray paint graffiti was gang related up until the 1960’s when the “Philly Wicked Style†was born. The Style consisted of large stylized letters with quotations stars that latter evolved into the most basic form of graffiti the tag. Philadelphia is the city were many regard the most recent form of graffiti to be born in. It was pioneered by the mystery graffiti writers “cornbread†and “cool earl.†They are the two men considered to be the first to write graffiti for seeing who can get their alias name everywhere. Others began to copy them and the graffiti writer “top cat†took this to New York City. There others saw this and began to write their “alias,†but it did not reach its popularity until Demetrius a Greek American foot messenger began to write graffiti. He called himself “Taki183,†Taki being a nickname and 183 for the street he lived on. Being a foot messenger he was able to travel great distances and place his alias everywhere he went. In time the New York Times caught attention to this name and did an article on it, leading to the city seeing it and created a an explosion of others copying him with their alias and street numbers. In time it spread through the streets and became an urban movement, where it was spread even further by the media and rap music to a world wide level during the 1980’s.
Over the years graffiti has grown out of its simplistic roots and into a world wide community spanning all races and corners of the globe. Growing with that is also the variety of thousands of styles from each individual. Today graffiti has reached its panicle level. Spreading to every continent populated by man. It is said that in just the United States it costs $8 Billion per year to clean up. 35% of all property vandalism in the United States is graffiti related according to the Buroe of Justice. In contrast to the common misconception only under 10% of graffiti are gang related and 78% “tagger†related while 5% is generic and 7% other. A sharp misconception of graffiti in the United States is that it’s the minority low-income adolescent committing the graffiti crimes but in fact it is 50-70% committed by suburban middle class adolescents of the 16-18 age groups. In the United States it is estimated that 60% of all graffiti writers are Caucasian and 30% Hispanic while 8% is African American and the other 2% is other. Fewer than 2% of all graffiti writers are female according to surveys done by pro-graffiti paint companies. Most graffiti writers are within 12-21 year old age groups but it is not rare for a 25 or older graffiti writers to exist. It has been known to recent studies to be actually addictive, some graffiti writers have been known to choose graffiti as their new “fix†powerful drugs like cocaine. Many companies have seen graffiti as a new market and have begun to capitalize on it; many new brands of paint have been created for the graffiti writer in mind in Europe named Montana, Belton, and Blubber paint.
Many people have the misconceptions of graffiti being a mindless act of rebellion. But in reality the movement is very deep concerning, rules, style, balance, and respect. Graffiti is no longer the minority but instead neighbors in you area. Constantly evolving the style and revolutionizing the graffiti movement one by one. But the average person has no idea of the different styles and varieties of writers and their works. Graffiti breaks down into two main forms, gang-graffiti and tagger “hip-hop†graffiti. Most people associate graffiti into all being gang related but the reality is 78% is the “hip-hop†related graffiti. While gang related graffiti is only done for the purpose of marking territory and recruitment and confined to their territory, tagger related graffiti’s goal is to be everywhere and be seen by the public. Tagger graffiti is all about the fame within their sub-culture on who can have their name up the most. Due to that, that form of graffiti is much more common and visible than the gang related kind. Tagger graffiti is broken up into four different forms. The “tag†is the most common and least appealing and is basically handwriting with a style and decorations. It serves only the purpose of having your name placed somewhere and is not meant to be “pretty.†This form is the most common and is what everyone thinks of when the word graffiti comes up. It is also the oldest and most basic form. The next level up is the “throw-up.†The throw-up is letter work in a bubble letter like form usually consisting of two to three colors an outline and a fill color. The lettering is simple to read and very easy to reproduce without consuming much time, most take under ten minutes to produce. This form came after the tag but has been used now for just putting your name in places that are very hard to reach or dangerous and very visible to the public. It was overshadowed by the more complex works so it needed to be moved into riskier places to still be seen as respectable to other graffiti writers. From this form comes the slang term to “bombing†which means to go out and paint an area with a large quantity of tags and throw-ups. It was given that name due to the idea that those styles are not meant to be good looking but very destructive, thus giving it the name of “bombing.†The next level up is the “piece†short for masterpiece. This form is where many could begin to consider it art, it is very complex and deals with many artistic aesthetics like color, balance, composition, and technique. These are usually not seen by the public because it is very hard to produce something like this without being caught since it takes three to eight hours. This can be found in creeks tunnels and other out of public sight spots hidden around cities. The whole purpose of painting one would be to show off ones personal skills to other graffiti writers and is considered better than tags and throw-ups. Some places have legal ones painted in larger cities. The piece can be broken up into three styles. The “wild style†which consists of a maze of letter work and decorations like arrows, yet keeps its balance and flow. The “NY old school†style is a semi-complex but very detailed colorful and balanced like the wild style. The newer and latest style is 3D pieces. These receive the utmost respect for their very artistic, complex and extremely difficult to produce due the idea that it has to look as if it has true depth on a flat surface. A lot of graffiti artist have been able to produce things that look actually real and hanging off the wall but in reality it is just a 2D painting. The ultimate form of graffiti is the production, this is when a group of graffiti writers come together to paint a large spot with multiple pieces, characters of the theme, and a themed background. These take hours if not days to produce and are seen by the public artistic and acceptable, they are basically murals done with spray paint. Most of these are done on buildings and walls which are legal, thus giving the graffiti writers all the time necessary to paint it without the problem of being caught. They usually paint the mural in theme with the business as a deal with the owners of the wall. These styles are the building blocks on which all other graffiti writers build up on and begin to evolve it further.
With most things comes ethic and rules and few know of the rules that many graffiti writers place on one another. Many graffiti writers have morals when it comes to where he is painting. Many graffiti writers leave alone actual homes of people, churches or places of worship and small businesses. Yet they do target large corporations and government property largely due to the fact that most of the sub-culture of graffiti writers are against government control and against large corporate entities. Many have the idea that corruption is growing amongst the government and people are being abused by the system. One graffiti writer once said that if he put up his work on a billboard officials would call it an eye soar for advertising himself, but then aren’t big companies adds everywhere just as bad, he said that at least they had a common respect for certain things while big business only cares to generate profits and everything and everyone else comes behind that. A graffiti writer named Sonik wrote “There are academics galore who are ready and willing with theses and desertions linking rap to griot culture, spirituals, blues music and toasting, but as yet there are few art theorists who are willing to trace a path in graffiti with hieroglyphics, Persian miniatures, Chinese calligraphy, Fin de Siecle lettering, soviet posters, and pop art. Instead, what graffiti attracts are criminologists and sociologists linking graffiti with broken window neighborhood decline theory and ritual transgression in young males.â€
Graffiti writers are extremely resourceful with the ability to use any tool available and even create everything from complex letters to photo-realistic characters using a wide array of spray paint cans, caps and techniques. Through cunning many graffiti artists have been able to keep mysterious yet have crafted a laser sharp assault on society. Graffiti writers have been known to use rocks to inscribe their names on glass and even use glass etching acids and put them into pens to write on glass. Another homemade device is filling up a coke bottle with dark ink and sticking a pin hole on the cap, thus being able to leak out ink to do tags on surfaces. Anything that can be used to write with will be used to tag, its been known that some people have emptied out deodorant sticks and filled them with ink then glued dry erase board erasers as nips and glued on creating a extra wide marker. There are a wide variety of paint brands that are imported from Europe that are at a much higher standard for spray paint. It is very thick in cover, very smooth and they have a much wider array of colors to choose from. Those paint brands are specifically made for the graffiti writer in mind, and they also produce a large amount of spray paint caps for different uses. The caps specialize on different aspects of spray you need. The caps differ from having calligraphy style strokes to extremely wide sprays ranging from 14-20 fingers wide. Nicknamed fat caps for their very wide spray widths and are used a lot for throw-ups due to their speed of filling large areas quickly. There are also caps that are very thing in width for detailed work and shading that have widths down to a finger nail. Those are used a lot for painting pieces and characters that require very small details and clean crisp lines. Both of those cap styles have variations of hardness of sprays, the harder spraying the better for solid crisp lines while the soft spraying ones are for 3D work and detailed shading. Even with these caps it still takes a massive amount of eye hand coordination to be able to achieve clean and well crafted works and years of technique to master the control of the paint flowing from the can to the wall with the same feel one would have on using a pencil on paper.
Whether it is called art or destruction, graffiti has been around civilization since man could write and will not cease to exist with the coming changes in time. Instead it will only be reborn only in different forms. One graffiti writer said that graffiti would always be a problem to society until they begin to accept it more and see it as an art form only then will it flourish as murals and abolish the tags which they so much hate. In a graffiti writers perspective he wants to society to work with them and not against him, most graffiti writers would give up the tags and throw-ups for the more artistic murals if they could have move places and opportunities for them but our culture in America wants to abolish it and that only creates more rage among the graffiti writers to destroy things. But on the other end the property owners see it as all one in the same, pure vandalism and it does cost cities millions to remove it and has become plague to many officials. It is here that people are fought over and divided into three categories. The one who chooses to understand it, see it for a deeper meaning and side with the graffiti writer. The one who does not understand it but doesn’t acknowledge it nor hate it, and the one who has disgust for it and chooses to eradicate it. Those three will decide the fate of the current evolution of graffiti and it is up to others to come to a conclusion of the controversial idea whether its vandalism or an artistic expression outlet.
- Nekro MCB -
that's what the fuck is up! (y)