I’m usually not a fan of the destructive ego stoking defacement of buildings that is grafitti, at least not until it gets sophisticated to the point of impromptu wall murals (and I’ll point out that the illusionistic sidewalk art I like is done in chalk and washes away); but defacement aside, I’ll make an exception for this.
MUTO is a frame by frame animation in which the “cells” are grafitti drawings on building walls, and the canvas is sections of the cities of Buenos Aires and Baden.
The artist, known only as BLU, has painted and repainted sections of wall with drawings that, photographed in sequence, make an animation.
If you can put up with the shakiness inherent in making a stop-motion animation with a hand-help camera, and the occasionally creepy tone of the story (such as it is, actually more of a stream-of-consciousness narrative), the interaction of the animations and the environments in, through, around and on which they play out, is fascinating and genuinely different.
[Via Digg, via SoulPancake]
wow – this is kinda brilliant.
I share your mixed feelings; I love looking at good grafitti, and I would be incredibly PO’d if somebody did it on the side of my house.
At least this piece has the side-effect of covering over some pretty mindless tagging.
Thanks for the comment, Jeff.
Other readers should check out Jeff Hayes’ beautiful small paintings (and others not so small), on his terrific blog, State of the Art, and his gallery website. Also see my previous posts about Jeff Hayes (and here).
Was any part of MUTO produced digitally on a computer?
There may have been some editing, as with any film, but as far as I know there was no digital manipulation or enhancement.