Tagging the Whole Earth...Day
Leave it to the competitive nature of the human spirit to invoke a challenge with the simple question: “What are you doing for Earth Day?”My students were excited and extra conscious about their actions – light, water, energy consumption – especially my seventh and eighth graders.
I think the Brookfield Zoo really opened their eyes to the part they play in excessive water usage. Their experimented was to calculate how much water they waste (4 gallons) if they leave it running while brushing their teeth (the recommended 2 minutes).
Of course, I did my part giving them tech tips to staying green.
Tip #1: First and foremost, Get a Mac. Not just any Mac, but the new 17” MacBook Pro. It is “The Greenest MacBook Pro Ever.” And I am not just saying that because I work for…I mean WITH Apple Computers.
Tip #2: After getting your MacBook Pro, the only site that will double your energy conservation efforts is Blackle.com. I recommend you set it as your homepage for whenever you open up a new window in Safari or Firefox. See, us tech people worry about staying green too.
Finally, to keep up with the whole Earth Day Competition, I showed them a video of the most important Earth Day contribution. A contribution so large, it took close to six thousand gallons of water-based paint, a little under an hour per tenth of an acre (2.8 acres) to complete and made every other Earth Day attempt look unoriginal.
Leave it to Wyland to show us how Earth Day should be done. The site of his Guinness Book of World Records Earth Day attempt at the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center is his second world record at the same location – surpassing the 1992 “Planet Ocean” mural. Most people call his work art, but I will call it what it truly is: graffiti.
Graffiti – as defined in Merriam-Webster – comes from the Italian word graffiare (to scratch) and means an inscription or drawing made on some public surface (as a rock or wall). Graffiti has been around since the beginning of time. In the Paleolithic Era or in Egypt when pharaohs ruled or during the reign of the Aztec and Mayan Civilizations, artists got credit and praised for the “scratchings” they left behind while messages from modern graffiare artists are viewed as public vandalism.
Let us be clear on two things: 1) God is the graffiti artist who inspired everyone.
2) Graffiti, when done on public property without permission, is vandalism and vandalism has no grey area. People who use graffiti to cause damage and destruction of property a) make it hard for aspiring graffiti artists (like myself) and b) are counterproductive to the principal of graffiti as it relates to the culture of Hiphop.
Graffiti – like the other pillars of Hiphop culture – was established to allow expression against social and political injustices.
1) OBEY (governmentally know as Shepard Fairey) is the graffiti artist behind Obama’s “Hope” poster or 2) graffiti artists throughout the West Bank trading guns for spray paint cans and continuing to tag The Longest Letter on the wall separating Israel and Palestine or 3) Arabic and the Koran that is inspiring Mohammed Ali to create unparalleled graffiti or 4) South East Wales graffiti artists given a 130-meter wall to honor fallen artist Roxe (governmentally know as Bill Lockwood) or 5) the countless locations – Albert Hall in London and Kelburn Castle in Scotland to name a few – that are allowing graffiti artists to add graffiti vividness to dull structures.
Tip #2: After getting your MacBook Pro, the only site that will double your energy conservation efforts is Blackle.com. I recommend you set it as your homepage for whenever you open up a new window in Safari or Firefox. See, us tech people worry about staying green too.
Finally, to keep up with the whole Earth Day Competition, I showed them a video of the most important Earth Day contribution. A contribution so large, it took close to six thousand gallons of water-based paint, a little under an hour per tenth of an acre (2.8 acres) to complete and made every other Earth Day attempt look unoriginal.
Leave it to Wyland to show us how Earth Day should be done. The site of his Guinness Book of World Records Earth Day attempt at the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center is his second world record at the same location – surpassing the 1992 “Planet Ocean” mural. Most people call his work art, but I will call it what it truly is: graffiti.
Graffiti – as defined in Merriam-Webster – comes from the Italian word graffiare (to scratch) and means an inscription or drawing made on some public surface (as a rock or wall). Graffiti has been around since the beginning of time. In the Paleolithic Era or in Egypt when pharaohs ruled or during the reign of the Aztec and Mayan Civilizations, artists got credit and praised for the “scratchings” they left behind while messages from modern graffiare artists are viewed as public vandalism.
Let us be clear on two things: 1) God is the graffiti artist who inspired everyone.
King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.God had a message that He needed to get across and by writing it on the Wall – graffiti – he ensured that everyone saw what He had to say.
Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way.
2) Graffiti, when done on public property without permission, is vandalism and vandalism has no grey area. People who use graffiti to cause damage and destruction of property a) make it hard for aspiring graffiti artists (like myself) and b) are counterproductive to the principal of graffiti as it relates to the culture of Hiphop.
Graffiti – like the other pillars of Hiphop culture – was established to allow expression against social and political injustices.
To many people around the world graffiti is an eyesore, mainly because it is alien to them, foreign, unknown, and a chaotic obstruction to everyday organized living. The ordinary citizen’s disconnection to the writing on the walls has allowed for anti-graffiti laws to be created by politicians with little fuss, and usually with the public’s support. In turn, the creators of the writings have become outlaws, simply because of the criminalization of the public act of getting up their names and messages…the impulse to paint and to communicate is too great for them to stop simply because their cities forbid it.These injustices have not disappeared since the 80s Golden Age of Hiphop. If anything, they are more prevalent in the world. Graffiti is being used around the world promote messages of hope.KET
1) OBEY (governmentally know as Shepard Fairey) is the graffiti artist behind Obama’s “Hope” poster or 2) graffiti artists throughout the West Bank trading guns for spray paint cans and continuing to tag The Longest Letter on the wall separating Israel and Palestine or 3) Arabic and the Koran that is inspiring Mohammed Ali to create unparalleled graffiti or 4) South East Wales graffiti artists given a 130-meter wall to honor fallen artist Roxe (governmentally know as Bill Lockwood) or 5) the countless locations – Albert Hall in London and Kelburn Castle in Scotland to name a few – that are allowing graffiti artists to add graffiti vividness to dull structures.
Wyland painted his 100th mural at the Beijing Olympic International Sculpture Park and whether he acknowledges it or not, he is a graffiti artist. This is the renaissance movement for graffiti artists, but if graffiti artists are met with ignorance and close-mindedness, life will imitate videogame art – Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure. A society that treats graffiti artist as social pariah will see more Banksys resorting to vandalism to speak out against social ills.
However, there are more important things graffiti artist need to worry about than getting busted for vandalism.
However, there are more important things graffiti artist need to worry about than getting busted for vandalism.
Montana GOLD 400mL in 182 colors: $8 eaUntil Montana makes eco-friendly aerosol cans, I guess we will have to make do with the WiiSpray technology and hope Nintendo will sponsor more graffiti events.
Extra fine, medium and extra fat cap: $.50 ea
Latex gloves: $3.29
The cost of harming the environment with aerosol pollutants: PRICELESS!
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