Finding Listeners for Walls that Speak

Geert J. Verhoeven; Massimiliano Carloni; Jona Schlegel; Benjamin Wild; Stefan Wogrin

doi:10.48619/indigo.v0i0.699

Geert J. Verhoeven Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft - LBI ArchPro, 1190 Vienna, Austria
Massimiliano Carloni Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Jona Schlegel Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft - LBI ArchPro, 1190 Vienna, Austria
Benjamin Wild TU Wien - Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation, 1040-Vienna, Austria
Stefan Wogrin SprayCity, Austria

DOI: https://doi.org/10.48619/indigo.v0i0.699

Abstract

Colourful and quickly changing: graffiti can be considered the chameleon skin of any urban landscape (Curtis, 2005). Two millennia ago, people were already writing their thoughts on the urban surfaces of Greek Aphrodisias in present-day Turkey (Chaniotis, 2011) or Roman Pompeii in Italy (Garrucci, 1856), and this practice has lived on throughout many cultures until this very day (Lovata & Olton, 2015; McDonald, 2013). Because of this long history and the multitude of surfaces on which graffiti have appeared, defining ‘graffiti’ is complicated. A safe but overly general definition could be that graffiti are a multifaceted, ‘self-authorised’ (Blanché, 2015) form of personal mark-making that exploits the public space using a visual intervention. ‘Graffiti’ can thus be an umbrella term for many ancient and contemporary mark-making practices, including engravings, paintings, sprayings, stickers, and other personal expressions attached to public (urban) surfaces in legal or illegal ways. [Note that we use the adjective ’ancient’ instead of the commonly found ‘historic’ since the latter excludes prehistoric paintings and inscriptions from the graffiti definition. For more info on how to define ‘graffiti’, see Schlegel et al. in this volume].

Author Biographies

Geert J. Verhoeven, Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft - LBI ArchPro, 1190 Vienna, Austria

Geert J. Verhoeven (°1978) is a senior researcher in archaeology at the LBI AchPro and is currently leading the academic graffiti project INDIGO. He received his Master’s and PhD degrees from Ghent University (Belgium) in 2002 and 2009, respectively. Since 2010, Geert has been working on many 3D modelling, remote sensing and data visualisation topics at the LBI AchPro, a research institute of which he is currently the vice director. In September 2021, Geert took a deep dive into the colourful graffiti world through project INDIGO. His research output can be found at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Geert- Verhoeven-2.

Massimiliano Carloni, Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1010 Vienna, Austria

Massimiliano Carloni (°1990) is currently employed at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage (Austrian Academy of Sciences) in Vienna. He completed his PhD in Classical Philology at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (Italy) in 2019 with a thesis on ancient Greek literature. His primary research interest lies in exploring the use of semantic technologies and metadata standards to describe and render accessible vast collections of diverse materials. In particular, he is interested in graph- based data models and linked open data. This led him to join the academic graffiti project INDIGO in November 2021 and take up the challenge of developing technical solutions for the description and long-term digital preservation of the collected data. His research output can be found at https:// www.researchgate.net/profile/Massimiliano-Carloni.

Jona Schlegel, Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft - LBI ArchPro, 1190 Vienna, Austria

Jona Schlegel (°1988) is doing a PhD at the University of Vienna (Austria) on archaeological stratigraphy and spatio- temporal reasoning. Furthermore, she is employed as a junior researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology. She received her Master of Science in Landscape Archaeology at the University of Applied Science and the Free University (Berlin, Germany) in 2018. Since 2017, she has been working with geophysical prospection methods like geomagnetics and ground-penetrating radar. Starting in September 2021, she is part of project INDIGO, focusing on the graffiti thesaurus, spatio-temporal data structuring and web development. Her research can be found at: https:// www.researchgate.net/profile/Jona-Schlegel

Benjamin Wild, TU Wien - Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation, 1040-Vienna, Austria

Benjamin Wild (°1996) is a PhD student and university assistant at the Photogrammetry unit at the Department for Geodesy and Geoinformation at Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien). He received his Master’s degree from TU Wien in Geodesy and Geoinformation in 2021. Since then, he has been part of the graffiti-centred academic project INDIGO. Before investigating photogrammetric solutions in the context of graffiti research, Benjamin was working in the same department but in the field of environmental microwave remote sensing. What connects both experiences is the interest in understanding our environment better. Be it the amazon rainforest or the graffiti along Donaukanal. Benjamin’s research output can be found at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/ Benjamin-Wild-5.

Stefan Wogrin, SprayCity, Austria

Stefan Wogrin (°1989) is an art historian and graffiti documenter. In 2001 he founded the “Spraycity “graffiti writing archive (https://spraycity.at), which is also an online platform where 100.000 graffiti photos are accessible online. The archive is based in Vienna. He received his Bachelor of Arts in art history and European ethnology from the University of Vienna in 2017. Since 2001 Stefan is also an active graffiti writer. Furthermore, he photographs graffiti from all different public surfaces in Vienna and the entire Europe. Since 2013, Stefan has also been researching the history of graffiti in Vienna, which is his main research interest. Stefan curated several exhibitions about graffiti, and he is the editor of the “Offline Graffiti Magazine “. The research Stefan is involved in can be found at https:// spraycity.at/research.