Graffiti Archaeology, Documenting The Evolution of Graffiti

Graffiti Archaeology is wondeful Flash-based gallery that documents how graffiti changes over time using a timelapse collage. I first came across this great website last month when they were documenting the painting over of the graffiti at Toxic Tire Beach.

Graffiti Archaeology (grafarc.org) captures this process of constant change and makes it visible. Grafarc.org is an interactive, timelapse collage of photographs of certain walls, taken over a span of months or years. The photos are precisely superimposed, so that by moving through the layers, you experience a compressed version of time passing, as old tags are submerged beneath new ones. You can see how one writer’s style changes over the years, or explore the dialogue between writers as they paint over each other’s work. The project also functions as a living archive, since most of the pieces on the site no longer exist in the real world.