Graffiti Analysis by Evan Roth is a project that visualizes the movements of graffiti writers in the creation of a tag.

Roth (aka fi5e) invited four of his favorite taggers - HELL, JESUS SAVES, AVONE, & KATSU to join his experiment. Their movements were recorded and analyzed by motion tracking software and subsequently Roth projected the digitized input onto various buildings in New York City.

Graffiti Analysis is a part of Evan Roth's graduation thesis, which is available for download. His website is an excellent resource for those interested in experimental street art and graffiti culture.

• www.ni9e.com

Flickr Peep Show is an interactive SMS installation based on photos from the photosharing website Flickr.com.

Users are encouraged to submit a keyword via SMS, after which photos from the Flickr database that are tagged with the particular keyword are projected onto a surface that is visible through a number of peepholes.

Flickr Peep Show is exhibited at Mediamatic/POST CS in Amsterdam during May and June 2005.

Furthermore, in the course of week 19, the installation Playing FLICKR (similar to the Flickr Peep Show) will be running at the Club/Restaurant 11, allowing dinner guests and club goers to interact with surrounding Flickr projections, also via SMS.

• Flickr Peep Show

Beukelsblue (Beukelsblauw) by Florentijn Hofman is a temporary urban artwork that has turned into a city attraction.

Hofman was asked to redecorate a soon-to-be demolished residential block in Rotterdam and, in agreement with the neighbors, he covered the empty block in blue paint as an attempt to make those who pass by reflect on its past, present and future meaning.

Beukelsblue (or more precisely, 'Beechblue') is named after the street Beukelsdijk and with few means, it has become one of the most intriguing public artworks in the city - unfortunately, it will only remain until a new plan has been developed for the ground.

• Beukelsblue

SoundAds is a telephonic advertising campaign where people, in contrast to traditional advertising, have to pay to get full access to the ad.

The campaign - which resembles the service you sometimes find at selected cultural landmarks - consists of a series of intriguing images that are tagged with a 0900 number, meaning that you have to pay via your phone bill to get the audible dimension of the ad.

The visual ads are made by Dutch photographers and illustrators and printed on posters, postcards and in publications. The audio-layer that comes with each ad, offers a short narrative story and/or sound composition that compliments the image.

The campaign was running in various Dutch media during March 2005 but if you missed it, you can see and listen to the ads (for free) at the SoundAds website.

• SoundAds

With the introduction of graphical user interfaces, computers did not only become easier to use - they also provided artists with an entirely new motif. Here is a brief overview of artists who explored this new territory by making 'analogizations' of digital interfaces.

'Webpaintings' is an ongoing project by French Artist Valéry Grancher, who claims to be the first artist to make a canvas painting of a well known webpage. Grancher's project began in 1998 but like so many other ideas, this artform spread simultaneously around the world like a meme.

The same year - 1998 - members of the Danish artfoundation Artnode portrayed 100 random parts of their webcontent using pencils and paper. '100 drawings' was later bought by the Danish National Gallery.

Russian artists Masha Boriskina also managed to sell an interface drawing when she in 2000 sold a portrait of www.rhizome.org to Rhizome itself and in 2004 the Japanese group Exonemo did a similar thing when they sold a Google painting to Google for $5000.

In 1999 Ola Pehrson created a more conceptual painting called 'Desktop', which is a 10:1 scale model of a Windows 95 interface. The painting was filmed and presented in real time on a computer screen, thus completing the cycle and giving the viewer the impression that it was a perfectly normal 1:1 desktop.

• Webpaintings! (above illustration: 'Google'. Acrylic on canvas.) 1998 - 2005 by Valéry Grancher. 100 Drawings 1998 by Artnode.org. Desktop 1999 by Ola Perhrson. Masha Draws 2000 by Masha Boriskina. Natural Process 2003 by Exonemo.

Did you ever wonder how much - or little - attention is being paid to your credit-card signature?

Full-time prankster John Hargrave asked himself the question and decided to investigate just how crazy he could make his signature before someone would notice.

Hargrave performed the prank with the intellectual assistance of his online readers at comedy-site Zug.com and got away with making funny scribbles, drawings and more cynical signatures like: "I Stole This Card".

Pranks like this will soon be history when ID verification systems go biometric - so, express yourself while you can!

• The Credit Card Prank

In collaboration with MTV, Volkswagen is about to launch a 3 week-long lifestyle event in Copenhagen to promote the newest and youngest member of its family - the VW Fox.

The event, which is called 'Project Fox', brings together young hip designers, artists and cooks who have been invited to develop and implement their creative ideas at three 3 unique locations: a hotel, a factory building and an old warehouse. These locations will form a collective gastronomic and artistic stage for the public introduction of the VW Fox. 800 European journalists have been invited to witness the event that kicks off on April 2nd.

One of the more interesting aspects about the event and the locations, is the hotel, which has been totally redesigned by 21 different artists. Each of the 61 rooms will be a unique artwork in itself. Somewhat like Hotel Winston in Amsterdam.
The plan is that Hotel FOX will live on after the event is over.

• www.project-fox.org • Hotel Fox

NameVoyager is a playful interactive web tool that visualizes baby-naming trends.

The underlying database contains 5000 names of babies born in the Unites States since 1900, as reported by the Social Security Administration.

You can either type in a name, or merely a single letter to see how it has been used over the past century in relation to similar names and letters. The visual volume reflects its changing popularity and if you find a name that intrigues you, simply click on it get more detailed statistics.

Namevoyager is a dynamic supplement to a book by Laura Wattenberg called 'Baby Name Wizard's', which is a field guide to soon-to-be-parents who are searching for the perfect baby name.

• NameVoyager via theyrule.net

In 2002, the Dutch rock band Coparck released a music video for their song 'Into Routine'.

The video was created by Margit Lukacs & Persijn Broersen and slightly resembles 'Eple' by Royksopp (the transitional photo-in-a-photo-in-a-photo video). 'Into Routine' is also made of still-images, but in contrast to Eple, the images are not taken from the band member's own photo albums but from a collection of stock-photography CD's borrowed at the public library in Amsterdam.

The duo manipulated and remixed the material and - voila! A music video containing professional models and exotic places - but made with a production budget close to zero.

Broersen and Lukasc's website contains lots of documentation of everything from art-installations to commercials for Siemens Mobile.

• Into Routine

GUI / Graphical User Interface is a re-presentation of the Adobe Photoshop interface within 3-Dimensional space. The illusion is created by using carton, photocopies, glue and sewing thread.

The humorous artwork is made by Joel Swanson who is a digital artist, writer, and researcher investigating the interconnections of literary theory, art, and technology. His work involves the creation of multimedia narratives that exist within digital space (and sometimes within carton space too).

• GUI / Graphical User Interface