The Virtual Graffiti Project

03/02/2014 Written by Todd Hopkins

To the Zone-​H community:

I’m a spe­cial­ist in graf­fiti, one of the old­est and most inter­est­ing forms of human expression.

As a researcher at a major North Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity, I’ve been care­fully fol­low­ing the most recent devel­op­ment in the long his­tory of graf­fiti: the move to the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment and the rise of what I call Vir­tual Graf­fiti – my name for the work you do and for what is pre­served here at Zone-​H.

I’m inter­view­ing vir­tual graf­fiti artists as part of The Vir­tual Graf­fiti Project, an exhi­bi­tion that I’m putting together with some friends and col­leagues, to intro­duce vir­tual graf­fiti to the broader world. I work on Skype or Gmail chat, and record inter­views on a dig­i­tal recorder, care­fully pro­tect­ing the anonymity of my sources (see below).

In the exhi­bi­tion and accom­pa­ny­ing book, I want to high­light the inter­est­ing works of vir­tual graf­fiti I’ve dis­cov­ered, as well as com­ments from the artists, to intro­duce both to the world, and estab­lish links between them and the ‘tra­di­tional’ graf­fiti we find in the ‘real’ world.

The project has been approved by my uni­ver­sity – which will guar­an­tee the con­fi­den­tial­ity of our inter­view. I pro­vide all par­tic­i­pants with a for­mal let­ter out­lin­ing the mea­sures taken to guar­an­tee the pri­vacy and con­fi­den­tial­ity of every­thing dis­cussed over the course of the interview.

I speak Eng­lish and French (and some Span­ish), but have access to inter­preters in most other languages.

If you’re inter­ested in dis­cussing your work with me, or if you have any ques­tions, please con­tact me at this email address: Virtual.​graffiti.​project@​gmail.​com

I hope to hear from you!

Todd Hopkins