Making a Mark—Towards a Graffiti Thesaurus

Jona Schlegel; Massimiliano Carloni; Stefan Wogrin; Ann M. Graf; Geert J. Verhoeven

doi:10.48619/indigo.v0i0.710

Jona Schlegel 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
Stefan Wogrin SprayCity, Austria
Ann M. Graf School of Library and Information Science, Simmons University, 02115 Boston MA, USA
Geert J. Verhoeven Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft - LBI ArchPro, 1190 Vienna, Austria

DOI: https://doi.org/10.48619/indigo.v0i0.710

Keywords: controlled vocabulary, faceted thesaurus, Getty AAT, graffiti, human-made marking, knowledge organisation system

Abstract

What does it mean to create graffiti? What exactly is (or are) graffiti? Graffiti and street art differ, right? Almost everyone has an opinion on what constitutes (modern) graffiti. Consequently, the term has taken on the most varied meanings in the conversations of academics, in media coverage, or in daily life. So how can one be sure about the meaning of the term (or any graffiti-related term, for that matter)? This is why glossaries, dictionaries, and other types of lists with definitions exist on websites, at the beginning or end of coffee-table books, and in scientific articles. However, there is currently no generally available, updateable, broadly accepted and easy-to-expand list of graffiti-related terms. Therefore, in order to meet the need for systematisation and consistency required for a more comprehensive study of graffiti, project INDIGO embarked on the journey to create a graffiti thesaurus. Being a finite set of terms (i.e. a controlled vocabulary) with hierarchical relations, this thesaurus will make INDIGO’s graffiti classification explicit and hopes to serve as a reference for the broader (academic) graffiti community.

Author Biographies

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

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.

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.

Ann M. Graf, School of Library and Information Science, Simmons University, 02115 Boston MA, USA

Ann M. Graf is an assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her MLIS and PhD in Information Studies in 2011 and 2018, respectively, from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research is embedded in the area of knowledge organisation and focuses on the systems used to organise information relating to textual and material works in libraries, archives, and museums. She has examined the documentation of graffiti art from around the world and the sufficiency of popular controlled vocabularies for graffiti art description. Her graffiti terminology research was awarded Best Paper at the 2016 ISKO conference, and she has served as an advisor on a Mass Humanities grant for the graffiti documentary “City as Canvas: Above the Free Walls,” by filmmaker Weiying Olivia Huang. More on her research output can be found at https://annmgraf.com.

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.