Researching Graffiti

See the Bibliography on Art Crimes (http://www.graffiti.org/faq/graffiti_biblio.html) for a concise list of known titles.

As a starting point I would suggest reading :

Castleman, Craig.
"Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York".
New York, New York: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1982.

Schmdlapp and Phase 2, eds.
"Style Writing From The Underground, (R)evolutions of Aerosol Linguistic."
Stampa Alternativa in Association with IGTimes, 1996
ISBN : 88-7226-318-2 .

Chalfant, Henry and Cooper, Martha.
"Subway Art."
New York, New York: Henry Holt & Co, publisher.
ISBN 0-8050-0678-8 1984, 1995.

Most books can be purchased over the Internet from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com).

There are many articles, interviews and other texts to be found also on Art Crimes (http://www.graffiti.org/index/talk.html). The Dark site also features a number of interviews with writers from around the world (http://www.caiw.nl/~gio/interview.html) including one with myself (http://members.xoom.com/efb/interdek.html).

Art Crimes have compiled a very concise document answering many questions (http://www.graffiti.org/faq/index.html). There is also a USENET group for the discussion of graffiti (alt.graffiti) and one for binary pictures (alt.binaries.pictures.graffiti).

I still have available an archive of articles that are exclusively about the London scene and in some cases the UK scene (http://www.graffiti.org/dj/old/articles.html). Be warned that none of the images associated with the articles are available.

Choose a different subject to research!!! Simple as that. Information about graffiti is notoriously tricky to find, as much of it is not documented. Try and find an angle that you can positively research using facts from existing documentation. It'll make your life easier in the long-run.

Starting Graffiti

There are no hard and fast rules to starting out. Everyone does it their own way. A few of your questions may be answered in the Art Crimes Q & A pages (http://www.graffiti.org/faq/graffiti_questions.html).

A few things you may like to take into consideration are :

1. Practice, practice and practice.
2. Learn the history of graf in your area, in the country and how it all started back in the days in New York.
3. Get to know your paint and it's limitations.
4. Watch other writers painting to see how they pull it off.
5. Practice again.

We have compiled a list of wallspace in London. Hopefully we'll extend this to the rest of the UK in the coming months.

Take a look at our paint guide at (http://www.graffiti.org/dj/n-igma/paint.html). You can also try visiting local Auto Factors shops many of which sell Hycote. Try to avoid using Duplicolor or Halfords own brand paint as this may not provide the result you were expecting. It is worth trying all different brands just to see what suits you best.

And yes ... paint is expensive to purchase. For better value try car boot sales, 'everythings a pound' shops or try to make an arrangement with your local retailer.

This is a grey area. I can only really suggest mail order from Graphotism or Style Wars in Glasgow (see http://www.graffiti.org/dj/n-igma/paint.html for more details) at the moment.

Digital Jungle

We are a collective of writers from mostly around the London area.

To promote UK graf scene on a global scale as well as providing an up to date picture of what's currently happening within the London/UK scene for writers involved within these scenes.

Nothing. Seriously!

We all share one thing in common ... we live and breath graf .. that provides enough of an incentive.

Not in any way whatsoever.

It was started back in late 1995, early 1996 and has since grown and grown to become what it is today.

When we were updating the Digital Jungle pages on a daily basis we were getting around 500 people a day visit the site. At it's peak we once had 7500 people visit in one single day. With the launch of N-igma, interest has once again grown and we are now averaging around 250 visitors a day. I would estimate that since starting doing the site, it's had around a quarter of a million visitors.

We draw from an archive of around 35 to 40 thousand. This grows by at least 2 to 3 hundred every month.

Probably because we've not got photos of it. Although we spend a lot of time travelling around all the walls, tracksides and spend many hours sitting in stations waiting for trains, we only get to see the tip of the iceberg. You can rectify this by sending your stuff to us at :

We can only publish graf painted in the UK, or graf painted by UK writers in other countries.

We are always on the look out for scene reports, general comment or interesting personal perspectives on the UK scene. Just email (dan@graffiti.org) the text to me and if you've got something to say that other people may find interesting then I'll gladly include it in the site.

Not really. There is no substitute for actually being out there and checking the graf in the flesh.. What we show is just a small selection of what we get to see. We do however, try to provide a cross section of action that is reasonably representative of who's doing what and where. But again it's purely based on what we see. Any bias is purely unintentional.

Basically because that's the scene we are involved in. There are hundreds of graffiti sites on the Internet from many different countries. If you want to see graf from these countries, visit them.

None at the moment. We will continue with N-igma for the foreseeable future. There are no plans to revert back to the way we used to update the site.

There are no plans to do this. We just don't have the time.

Only with permission from me (dan@graffiti.org). All photos on the site are copyrighted to the photographer and any breach of copyright will be pursued.

Visiting London/UK

See our guide to walls in London (guide.html). If your visiting outside of London, then we can't really point you in the right direction. Most big towns and cities have wallspace.

Don't even bother asking.

Bring it with you. Paint here is expensive and tricky to get ahold of. We have very few shops that you can just walk into a pick up a range of Belton/Sparvar/Montana. Take a look at our paint guide (http://www.graffiti.org/dj/n-igma/paint.html) for some further details.

See our guide to walls in London for details of the best spots to get photos. There are no guarantees of success as most productions don't last longer than a few days in London. There is only a .0000000000000000000000001 chance you will see a running train, so don't expect to come back with film upon film of steel damage.

9 times out of 10 it's not possible. Unless your over here for a longish stay or give us advance warning of your visit, then there's a fair chance we can't help you. If we can't hook you up, we can normally point you in the right direction.

The cheapest places to stay are in the Youth Hostels (http://www.yha.org.uk/). There are also plenty of B&B's that are reasonably priced.

Miscellaneous

I get roughly 50 emails a day and very little time to respond to all of them (hence this FAQ). I always endeavour to answer all emails as quickly as possible, but I'm often running about 2-3 weeks in arrears. I generally don't do interviews although I might be able to put you in contact with some writers that will.

Not many ... but there are a few :

If you know of any others, please let me know and I'll add them to the list.