The iphone, graffiti & sanitized street art

Jul 6, 2010

All City street art and graffiti developed by Semaphore mobile is a great app for all fans of art and particularly street art (think Banksy) and the app has a variety of great functions.

Functions include:

Image gallery to browse the street art pictures sent by others users around the world also showing where they are located on a map.
Map with icons showing where the pictures are located. Tap an icon the picture will be shown in full screen.
Section where users can take pictures of street art and share them with others users. Pictures wait in a queue until they are uploaded.
Rate other users uploads
Users can also add a title and description and several tags

I personally am a big fan of Banksy (amongst other street artists) and ‘reclaim the streets’ initiatives so this app is a personal favorite. There’s an example of banky’s work below:

Welcome to the sanitized world:

In a previous incarnation of Appertunity blog I reviewed a similar iphone street art app which was based on the BeeLoop Flicker group which has a nice collection of street art. It was actually called Street Art & it allowed you to do much the same as All City street art iphone app in that you could upload your own street art finds (below is an image that I took and submitted to group in Bradford UK):

However Street art app (and the flickr group) also included this ridiculus statment:

Please note that pictures with the next items won’t be accepted in the group:

· Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
· Realistic Violence
· Sexual Content or Nudity
· Profanity or Crude Humor
· Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References
· Mature/Suggestive Themes
· Simulated Gambling
· Horror/Fear Themes
· Prolonged graphic or sadistic realistic violence
· Graphic sexual content and nudity

Welcome to the world of sanitised street art a complete contradiction in terms!

I find is another symptom of a society slowly being suffocated by laws and regulations that attempt to cause ‘the least offence to all’ thereby killing off creativity in the process!

I find all this ridiculous & extreamly ironic given that Graffiti and street art which by it’s very nature is subversive and more often than not involves violence, nudity, sexual content, horror, gambling and is often insulting and likley will cause offence! That is often its point!

God help us all when cartoon boobs and depictions of dice or fire arms are cause for public outrage! If you want to be outraged go fight poverty and channel your ridiculous views into doing some good!

When will adults be able to be adults and see adult things without this ridiculous fear that all our children will suddenly turn into sex obsessed, perverts and violent criminals!

Apples ridiculously draconian stance on anything deemed to cause the slightest offence or involving sexual content (I say fine if you want to protect children from these percived threats have systems in place but don’t force them on adults!) is extremely irritating to most sane adults! (See this post about Apples stance on Pornography)