Hi Pedro,

I believe that questions of community participation are deeply
relevant to interaction design regardless of whether that
participation is mediated by software. It's human interaction at a
social, political or environmental level.

A few years ago, two designers at Carnegie Mellon did their Masters
thesis on an understanding of graffiti in Pittsburgh, exploring the
tension between its creation and the civic response. I seem to
remember that community leaders tried to establish sanctioned spaces
for graffiti that were ultimately unsuccessful (partly because
over-zealous city workers painted over the graffiti anyway). 
http://www.anneiasella.com/interactive/graffiti.html

More recently, in 2005 a sculpture was installed on Hayes Green in
San Francisco that seemed to encourage civic participation in
graffiti, bridging the divide between authoritative and illicit
public authoring. It was virtually covered with pen-drawn doodles and
notes in a matter of weeks. It was eventually removed.
http://laughingsquid.com/david-best-hayes-green-temple/

I came across a non-digital environmental project on a blog just this
weekend that promotes community interaction through a sort of reverse
graffiti. 

>From the project description: "For the second cycle of the 'Keeping
in Touch' project, and 18m long silver rub-off surface spreads on the
Royal Festival Hall hoardings. As people scratch parts of it, they
uncover a new dimension to their environment."
http://www.milkandtales.com/hiddenlovesong/hiddenlovesong.html

The idea of reverse graffiti is interesting to me:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/13/reverse-graffiti-con.html

It's a little like publicly shaming the owner of a dirty car by
writing "wash me" on the rear window, where the goal is to shape
behavior.

// jeff


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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=21499


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