In 2023, Helton Levy and Eleonora Diamanti published a research article that has probed the relationship between illegal graffiti in Rome and the publication of photos containing graffiti on Instagram. By proposing a unique method toolkit that use computer vision to dissect social media images of graffiti and visits to graffitied sites in the city of Rome, the authors argue that social media graffiti depoliticises the radical tradition that bounds up together writers, graffiti and viewers in the city.
For the full article and the abstract see below.
Spray without politics? Contrasting street-based perceptions and computer vision framings of graffitied Rome
Abstract
The city of Rome has been a contested site for unauthorized graffiti since antiquity. Modern times have seen graffiti practices endure in their disruptive form and viral versions of digital street art. This paper applies critical, speculative methods to approximate distinct areas of graffiti research into a common framework of analysis. The idea was to offer insights into graffiti audiencing on digital and street-based spheres of perception while discussing the method’s limitations. After listing convergences and divergences between human-centric and algorithm-centric viewpoints, results revealed an interesting set of details uniquely brought up by computer vision metadata, but which, in turn, exposed limitations in recgonizing graffiti as a politicized practice with deep radical roots.
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Urban Media and Participatory Spaces Research Group 