Last Friday Wired ran an article on a new phenomenon called grafedia and several days later I am still intrigued. Grafedia is simple in practice, but the concept is further proof that the line between the real world and the digital world continues to blur.
According to the article it works like this: you take a picture of anything you like and choose a word. Then email the picture to yourword@grafedia.net. Once grafedia has your image it gets loaded onto their servers and you run around town painting yourword@grafedia.net anywhere you like (at your own risk of course). Anyone who sees your email link can send a text message to the address and they will receive your image by email. Crazy huh?
Where it gets even crazier is that some people are just underlining a word in an ad in blue and turning that into grafedia (ie just email the underlined word @ grafedia.net) Suddenly ads can become art. I can create a public work of art with nothing but a blue pen. I can make a statement about your statement literally, without saying a word. Now granted, this isn't exactly a wide-spread phenomenon yet. I haven't seen any grafedia in White Rock, but I wonder if I'd be able to find some in Vancouver? Can't you just picture it run amok at Google HQ, or Microsoft? You know what nerds are like ;)
I'm intrigued by the idea of stealth street art, of associating something with something completely different -- ie creating a link on an ad that maybe goes to another product altogether, or a BBB report or. . . They talk about the technorati as its own privileged little group. Did we just find the secret handshake?
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