World's first global graffiti-jam at London Design Festival

Graffito at Warehouse Vintage@Goodwood (Image copyright Graffito 2010)

Graffito is an experiment in massive crowd-made graffiti. It allows anyone to scrawl digital paint on a giant projection wall using their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, or by dancing around with their handset.

The online version runs continuously, so that anyone online can draw graffiti at any time with anyone else from anywhere in the world, and with over 10,000 iTunes downloads in just a few weeks, it is set to be a massive hit with digital artists.

The technology behind these unique pieces of crowd-created graffiti has been developed by computer scientist Dr Nick Bryan-Kinns, from the Interactional Sound and Music Group in the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) at Queen Mary, University of London, in collaboration with digital art company BigDog Interactive with a little help from the trusty iPhone.

Graffito was inspired by the underground 80s hip hop scene and pays homage to guerrilla street art and turns it into a celebration of pop culture on a massive scale.

Graffito was launched with fanfare at the Vintage@Goodwood festival in August of this year. Martyn Ware, curator and member of the band Heaven 17, said: “As curator of the main stage at Vintage, I was on site for the whole 3 days - the Warehouse was a fantastic area, faithfully reproducing the halcyon days of 80's clubbing yore - but the icing on the cake was the Graffito interactive light installation, which engaged the audience and gave the whole funky event a 21st century vibe - outstanding!"

Graffito is a collaborative effort between several UK partners who are experimenting with next gen digital live art. Graffito is supported by Horizon Digital Economy Research (Research Councils UK grant EP/G065802/1). The partners are: BigDog Interactive (lead); the Interactional Sound and Music Group, Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary, University of London; Mixed Reality Lab and Horizon Digital Economy Research, University of Nottingham; Proboscis; and, the University of Glasgow.