Course Info

Mondays, 6:00 pm - 8:40 pm
Arnhold Hall 55 West 13th St, Room 805

Me:
Evan Roth
email: evan (at) evan-roth.com

Course Objectives:
The main goal of this course is to learn to look upon our surroundings in a new way. It is my aim that by the end of this course you will walk around the city differently than when it started. You will know you are getting there when you start to annoy your friends by interrupting conversations to stop and take a photo of what looks to them to be a mess of ink.

In GEEK GRAFFITI we will also be making things designed to exist within the city. Succesful projects will use the urban environment as a unique medium and answer the follow questions:

“Why is it important that this is outdoors? Would this be any good if it weren’t? Why does it matter that this is done where and how it was? How is this new and, most importantly, why should I care?”
(Questions from http://streetartblows.com)

Expectations:
I expect that all of your projects will get linked up like crazy and bring you internet fame and glory. If you think differently than you are in the wrong class. There will be a lot of work but doing all of the assignments and attending every class should result in an ‘A’ grade.

Become an expert on your surroundings:
It is impossible to know everything that is happening in the streets. It is possible, however, to know your immediate daily surroundings better than anybody else. You should know more about the graffiti between your apartment and Parsons better than anybody else in the world.

Breaking the Law:
Graffiti by its very definition is illegal. In this course we will not be breaking any laws but we will be thinking very hard about what could be possible if we did. Projects will be built, prototyped, and presented as “concepts”. Students are not expected to implement their projects in the city but are required to justify where, why, and how they would ideally exist.


Ridiculousness:
The ridiculousness of a graduate level course on graffiti does not escape me. Graffiti will survive forever without need of collegite study. But while graffiti does not need academia, academia has a lot to learn from graffiti. The point of this course is not to turn you into a graffiti writer, it is to learn from graffiti writers and apply your specific set of skills to fighting a similar cause. What we are is a just a bunch of nerds with a grudge, and as long as we embrace that we will do just fine.

Fame:
Graffiti, unlike the rest of the art world, is very honest and up front about its interest in fame. We will do the same. Publications in any of the following places will result in an automatic ‘A’ for the semester:
- the front page of digg.com
- a post on boingboing.net
- a post on the woostercollective.com
- a post on gawker
- Making the font page of youtube.com
- mention in the New York Times or other NYC daily papers.
- mention on local News.
- 25,000 Vimeo views (on a single video)
- 100,000 Youtube views (on a single video)
(Other worthy publications will be handled on a case by case basis)

Technology:
In GEEK GRAFFITI we are not interested in technology as much as we are in ideas. I will facilitate support for technical questions as much as I am able but in the end you will be evaluated on the strength of your ideas rather than the complexity of your code. “Technology” will be used in the broad sense, ranging from ink, to stop signs to bit shifting. The term ‘geek’ refers to the way in which hackers exploit systems for their own purposes…. good graffiti artists do the same.

The Web & Documentation:
Nothing exists in this course until it is online. Since we are people interested in sharing ideas, the web should be a forethought and not an afterthought. Everything is just talk until it begins with http://. I don’t want to hear about a really cool tag you saw, I want to see it. I don’t want to hear about your brilliant project ideas, I want to see them. The more you hit the ‘publish’ button in this class the better you will do. Get used to uploading early and often.