Broadcasting House is the headquarters of the BBC, in Portland Place and Langham Place, London. The first radio broadcast was made on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May.

Broadcasting House is the headquarters of the BBC, in Portland Place and Langham Place, London. The first radio broadcast was made on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May.

the headquarters of the BBC, in Portland Place and Langham Place, London. The first radio broadcast from the building was made on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May. The main building is in Art Deco style, with a facing of Portland stone over a steel frame. It is a Grade II* listed building and includes the BBC Radio Theatre, where music and speech programmes are recorded in front of a studio audience.

Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting. ©2022 SDPB | Tim Tushla

Kenzo Tange

Late afternoon, Sunday November 17, 2013: captured by a passing photographer, artist Stephen B Whatley on location as he completed his new painting of the BBC New Broadcasting House.

 

The stunning amalgamation of the original Broadcasting House of 1932 with the new development has proved a challenge to photographers who have generally sought to photograph it from the air; but Whatley - who has a history of undertaking major architectural commissions on location, including 30 paintings for the Tower of London - was excited and greatly inspired by the challenge of capturing the immensity of this national landmark from ground level.

 

To see the complete painting close up:

www.flickr.com/photos/stephenbwhatley/11012041863/in/phot...

 

History of BBC Broadcasting House:

www.bbc.co.uk/broadcastinghouse/bh_story/index.shtml

 

Photograph: Courtesy of David Furness, of BBC Kent:

www.flickr.com/photos/96006830@N02/

 

www.stephenbwhatley.com

  

I loved the abstractness (is that a word??) of the windows against the rusty panels on this building.

  

I was taking a few random telephoto shots out of the window of one of the upper floors of New Broadcasting House the other day during my lunch break, and the top of one particular building stood out to me as interesting. No idea what it was, but I did a flyover of the area using Google Maps' very handy 3D view, and discovered that the building was Senate House. Not somewhere I'd heard of before, but I thought it warranted a closeup visit with my tilt shift setup.

 

Went there on Saturday afternoon and grabbed a few shots including this one. Slightly tricky to successfully capture up close due to the positioning of both a lamppost on the pavement slap bang in the centre in front, and then a similarly awkward post with a security camera on top from behind the fence. So I went with a slightly wider view from the road in landscape format. You can still see both the offending bits of street furniture, but from this distance they are somewhat mitigated by the focal length.

 

Apparently, it is said that in connection with the building housing the Ministry of Information during WW2 it inspired George Orwell's depiction of the Ministry of Truth in his classic 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'.

  

SBS sign in Federation Square. The Special Broadcasting Service is a hybrid-funded Australian public broadcasting radio and television network. The stated purpose of SBS is "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia's multicultural society".

no rules, no limitations, no boundaries it's like an art™

© All Rights Reserved by ajpscs

.

 

DIGITAL TERRESTRIAL BROADCASTING

The major role of TOKYO SKYTREE is transmission of digital terrestrial broadcasting. Digital terrestrial broadcasting has already been in use since December 2003 in the Kanto area, but due to the many tall buildings rising over 200m high in central Tokyo, it has become necessary to build Tokyo Skytree.

 

The height of the TOKYO SKYTREE was originally specified at approximately 610m in the original project. However, it was planned from the beginning to be the world's tallest free-standing broadcasting tower. After careful discussion and research on high-rise buildings that are being built around the world, it was finally decided on 634m, to become the tallest free-standing broadcasting tower in the world.

 

1971 - PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, network for 205 noncommercial TV stations. Logotype designed by Ernie Smith of Lubalin, Smith, Carnase, Inc., under direction of Lawrence K. Grossman, Inc., advertising agency for PBS — Source: American Trademark Designs, 1976

 

THIS LOGO MAKES A SOUND

Tokyo Skytree or Tokyo Sky Tree, is a broadcasting and observation tower, located in Sumida, Tokyo, Japan. It is the tallest tower in Japan since opening in 2012, and reached its full height of 634 meters (2,080 ft) in early 2011, making it the tallest tower in Japan, displacing the Canton Tower, and the third tallest structure in the world behind Merdeka 118 and Burj Khalifa.

The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Developed by Groening, James L. Brooks, and Sam Simon, the series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. Set in the fictional town of Springfield, it caricatures society, Western culture, television, and the human condition.

 

The family was conceived by Groening shortly before a solicitation for a series of animated shorts with producer Brooks. He created a dysfunctional family and named the characters after his own family members, substituting Bart for his own name; he thought Simpson was a funny name in that it sounded similar to "simpleton". The shorts became a part of The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987. After three seasons, the sketch was developed into a half-hour prime time show and became Fox's first series to land in the Top 30 ratings in a season (1989–1990).

 

Since its debut on December 17, 1989, 762 episodes of the show have been broadcast. It is the longest-running American animated series, longest-running American sitcom, and the longest-running American scripted primetime television series, both in seasons and individual episodes. A feature-length film, The Simpsons Movie, was released in theaters worldwide on July 27, 2007, to critical and commercial success, with a sequel in development as of 2018. The series has also spawned numerous comic book series, video games, books, and other related media, as well as a billion-dollar merchandising industry. The Simpsons is a joint production by Gracie Films and 20th Television.

 

On January 26, 2023, the series was renewed for its 35th and 36th seasons, taking the show through the 2024–25 television season. Both seasons contain a combined total of 51 episodes. Seven of these episodes are season 34 holdovers, while the other 44 will be produced in the production cycle of the upcoming seasons, bringing the show's overall episode total up to 801. Season 35 premiered on October 1, 2023.

 

The Simpsons received widespread acclaim throughout its early seasons in the 1990s, which are generally considered its "golden age". Since then, it has been criticized for a perceived decline in quality. Time named it the 20th century's best television series, and Erik Adams of The A.V. Club named it "television's crowning achievement regardless of format". On January 14, 2000, the Simpson family was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 35 Primetime Emmy Awards, 34 Annie Awards, and 2 Peabody Awards. Homer's exclamatory catchphrase of "D'oh!" has been adopted into the English language, while The Simpsons has influenced many other later adult-oriented animated sitcom television series.

 

Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).

 

Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions

 

"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".

 

The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.

 

The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.

 

Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.

 

Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:

 

Wet with cool dew drops

fragrant with perfume from the flowers

came the gentle breeze

jasmine and water lily

dance in the spring sunshine

side-long glances

of the golden-hued ladies

stab into my thoughts

heaven itself cannot take my mind

as it has been captivated by one lass

among the five hundred I have seen here.

 

Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.

 

Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.

 

There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.

 

Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.

 

The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.

 

In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:

 

During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".

 

Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.

 

While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’

 

Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.

 

An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.

 

Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983

 

Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture

Main article: Commercial graffiti

With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.

 

In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".

 

Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.

 

Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.

 

Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.

 

Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.

 

There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.

 

The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.

 

Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.

 

Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis

 

Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.

 

Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.

 

Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"

 

Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal

 

In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.

 

Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.

 

Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.

 

Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.

 

With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.

 

Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.

 

Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.

 

Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.

 

Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.

 

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.

 

Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.

 

Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.

 

The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.

 

I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.

 

The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.

 

Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.

 

Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.

 

In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".

 

There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.

 

Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.

 

A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.

By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.

 

Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.

 

In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.

 

A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.

 

From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

 

In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.

 

Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.

 

Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.

 

Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.

  

In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.

 

Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.

 

In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.

 

In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."

 

In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.

 

In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.

 

In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.

 

In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.

 

In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.

 

The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.

 

To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."

 

In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.

 

In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.

 

Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".

 

Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)

In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.

 

Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.

 

Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.

 

In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.

 

Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.

 

Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.

 

To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.

 

When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.

THE DISCOVERY by gleitzeit blog (the lost Interview in Rome)

 

I am using magnifying glass to be able to read a a PDF file of a very low quality.

My eyes are hurting. What I have found is something that is just not available…

I must say on the search for anything tagged “invisible” I find some pretty amazing

stuff I would never know about (later on that)

 

Paul meet me at the gate. He looked younger than I had expected. Dressed

casually.

As a host he cordially offered me to dine. While we entered the hall I had an urge to ask him, is this a museum? trying not to break anything as we passed by sculptures, paintings,

ceramics and a lot of other pieces of art which I had never seen before.

This unexpected excitement spoiled my appetite, and I was no longer hungry and

instead drank some wine.

He made clear that it is not any kind of a museum, but instead, his Paul’s studio. He lives not in Rome, but by the Terranian sea, where he was going shortly.

I asked Paul how he earns a living. Paul thought a little and tried to find an appropriate explanation. He finally lit on: "I am of independent means and don’t have to earn a living" pouring me another glass of wine.

I asked him: “ Can I buy some of your paintings? How much it will cost me?”

This question Paul left unanswered but he said that commonly he paints his

pictures without the intention to sell them.

Earlier I noticed a little girl and a young woman moving about him.

 

OMG!!!! I am shaken up. NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT Paul Jaisini’s personal life! I don’t believe this. THANK YOU GOOGLE! this is like really mystifying. I am not an emotional person, rather someone who loves to work hard and get the job done. This turned into something other than working.

Google nowadays is not your “grandfather’s” google so to speak. It is tailored

around you, your daily Internet activity, So finding any news, any special

information is no longer an easy task. I guess because there’s too much of

everything and what one is looking for could be placed out of reach. So we sort

of live on a planet that is flat as in dark ages. I say that because if one is

provided the info that is tailored with limitation it implies that breaking

away is not something one would even comprehend! We are too used to trust our social functioning and think that we know everything, on top of all news provided to us by the honest practice of the broadcasting companies.

We don’t want to be those conspiracy freaks with no trust to anything or

anyone. But truth is, if you don’t want to pay high dollar for some expert

articles on the topics that could give more than the free info, you are really

up against a brick wall of the new unknown reality and a total incapacity to acquire

the needed info of high quality without spending your whole life learning all the crap on the net and beyond in order to find finally what you need.

So search is a tricky mother. If you are creative and sort of spontaneous you

might somehow find your own style of fishing out the essentials. But in my case I

often felt helpless and lost no longer willing to participate in this

undertaking trying to document Gleitzeit.

It doesn’t look like I had managed a short explanation. But this is my formula of

finding something that is not available on the tailored to fit google search.

I enter the variations of phrases and words from the gleitzeit context of emails, postings, essays and add some other words I find on my way of locating Paul Jaisini's links. Turning the tag in a sort of a potion number nine that had proven to fetch some impossible to find info on such a quick inquiry without opening thousands of websites where I might find or might not find anything at all. And the most effective findings are with the tag "invisible" added to other things, be it email abbreviations and so on.

 

“The other must be his wife”, I thought, because Paul called her with some pet name's asking for a bottle of wine, for a book, or an ash tray.

“Is she your wife? “ I asked just in case.

Paul looked me in the eyes and said: “She is not my wife, nor the mother of my daughter, she is my secretary. “

The secretary I sensed didn’t like me much.

She didn’t call Jaisini by his name, Paul, but she instead addressed him as

mister Jaisini. She seemed obsequious and perhaps didn’t like me for my unrestrained manner and direct questions. She said to Paul: “You should not waste your time on this interview. You need to return to your work. “

Paul said: “It will be few minutes." and spent a few hours with me. A self-ruling man.

Paul didn’t drink any wine but he behaved at times extravagantly, showing the

outlines of the silhouettes in his paintings and explaining what was happening in the pictures.

Paul said that the point of his art being hidden from the public is an

intrigue that engages press in constant attempts to uncover the ‘truth’ behind it all. Nevertheless it is very disappointing, that people don’t care about real art, as they do about private affairs.

We went upstairs and in a spacious hall I saw a large painting. I didn’t hide my

awe.

“Wow! Where did you get such a big piece of canvas? The art stores don’t sell

this linen in such sizes. “

“It is stitched together from pieces," answered Paul.

“How did you reach the upper parts of the painting"

"I climbed the riser. Do you see the nude black man up there, tangled with a

serpent?"

"It reminds me of Laocoön. Is it intentional?"

"No, he is a symbol of physical grace without intellect. Do you see a group of

female bodies intertwined in a threesome?"

"No, I don’t see it. Where is the threesome?"

"To the left, look there."

"I look there."

"There the three figures, here is one, here is another one and the third one."

"Third is not a female figure, it’s some animal."

"It’s a female, but there is an animal, a bit higher up. The clown in the center

tears his mouth in a bloody smile, carrying out his role of a fool, laughing when

he wants to cry."

"Is that a monkey?"

"You got it, she is another symbol of the fate, she stopped hitting the tom-tom,

her direct purpose in circus. When she stopped to play and started to think, she

realized that her life is pitiful and she wants to kill herself. It’s a second

symbol of the same meaning."

"Tell me about that threesome again."

"Well, they show the natural grace, as three graces would, the sensual concept of

procreation."

"This picture must be a depiction of a circus performance, I suppose. Is it ?

Why it is so dynamic?"

"It is a circus performance but is the personal trial of human character. The ball construction is an object: - Paulsen’s ball, it is also a title of the painting."

"This ball creates some weight and it seems to move the composition with it’s

size and position and it seems to be on a verge of rolling down."

"You’re right! I also sense this immediate impulse to prevent the clown to fall

off that ball.

We went to other paintings, whole series of paintings.

When I gathered all my sensations about the art that surrounded me, it was time to leave. Paul Jaisini escorted me to the door. I shook his hand saying:

"You are an interesting man!"

"I am not a man..."

(the last sentence was a good ending)

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolism

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolism_(arts)

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisibility

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracefulness

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_object

 

Have to type as I read PDF file that can’t be copied

 

Have to type as I read PDF file that can’t be copied

I am using magnifying glass to be able to read a a PDF file of very low quality. My eyes are hurting. What I have found is something that is just not available… I must say on the search for anything tagged “invisible” I find some pretty amazing stuff I would never know about (later on that) Now I am sitting in my office instead of having night out. It really is an impossible task to just discern the text. I filled up a spray bottle with cold water to spray my face to frequently refresh my eyes, as they get tired from the magnifying glass. It’s totally worth it, the thrill of discovery is my ultimate high.

Subj: Re: any suggestions?

Date: 2/5/00 Pacific Standard Time

From: bcwoodward@bigfoot.com (B. Woodward)

To: Yustas61@aol.com

CC: Angela Ahermeign

The attached file with original text before translation can be used in all related your project on Paul Jaisini.

All my corrections are in () and sometimes they replace the words nearby, other times they get inserted or have comments as well. It should be clear. Angela, you had some trouble with colloquialisms, unclear constructions and misplaced verb tenses. You switched among various forms of the past with irregularity. I’ve brushed it up. It makes a good narrative, though. Very interesting :)

Original Message-

From Angela A, Sent Thursday, February 03, 2000, 4: 25 PM

to bcwoodward@bigfoot.com

Subject Any suggestions

My first meeting with Paul Jaisini in Rome

(was it your first meeting with him, or just first time in Rome… unclear construction)

Paul Jaisini’s appearance at the exhibition of his art made a lot of noise in 1995 in Rome.

(caused a lot of noise, a lot of excitement, or was it just a noisy appearance?)

After newspapers published the (a) photograph of Paul Jaisini in the empty gallery, I read the article and realized how lucky I was to be in Rome. Nobody saw Paul Jaisini’s paintings. Yes, nobody… This what happened next. I called him once, then (a) second time. (,b)But Paul didn’t return my calls. Unfortunately I was not able to stay on guards (stand guard is the appropriate colloquialism) to catch him by the art gallery being (as I was) preoccupied with my (own) business. So I decided that I have (needed, not have) to find a way to see Paul Jaisini’s (hidden) paintings if he hides them. Such extravagance has (had) to be stopped.

I decided to offer him (no him here) to write a testament about (to) the existence of his art (, which would necessarily lead to him revealing it to me.) which will rise the necessity to see it.

I heard about Paul Jaisini before (that time) because he is quite a (reverse the a and quite) well-known contemporary artist. When I set up the appointment to meet (him) I easily found his cozy two- story town-house surrounded by (an) antique iron fence.

When I called (on) the intercom it took a while to explain who I was and why (I had come) did I come.

Paul meet me at the gate. He looked younger than I (had) expected. Dressed casually.

As a host he cordially offered me to dine. While we were entering (entered) the hall I had an urge to ask him, (“I) is it (this) a museum (?), trying to brake (break) anything, (no comma… as we passed) passing by sculptures, paintings, ceramic pieces (ceramics… drop the p word) and a lot of (other pieces of) art which I (had never seen before. drop rest of the sentence) was not able…

Gosh, I can feel how B. Woodward was feeling… WILL SHE REALLY SEE THE PAINTINGS by PAUL JAISINI?????? my eyes are punishing me for this thrill. I need to stop looking into the magnifier when I am now writing a comment without looking into unreadable copy.

Just waiting to get the courage to continue… my eyes need rest, I made myself some coffee with soy milk. But it surely means I want to prolong the suspense. I have no idea what is written in that text I located only god knows where or how.

I think that a gamer guru would understand me after he/she played hardest strategic games for a very long time and turned into a savvy thrill seeker.

  

medium.com/art-submissions/don-t-bother-901454f687cd The time has come to start making sense of things, of the world, of each other. We think we’re doing that, but we’re actually doing the opposite. We are complicating…EVERYTHING…tothe point of utter madness. Our world has become one ginormous madhouse, ESPECIALLY cyberspace — this alternate world we created within our world that seems to have created a world within itself — yet to be identified, recognized, and named. Making sense of things is not a bad thing. For example, let’s start with one major web enigma: Paul Jaisini and “Gleitzeit” which is this, uh, odd art movement the guy started in the 90s. If you simply google either of those names, I gaurantee you a good WTF moment or two. You’ll not just be scratching your head over this one. You’ll be scratching every part of your body like a delusional nutcase who thinks your skin is literally crawling with countless bugs. IT’S GONNA BUG THE HELL OUT OF YOU, let’s just say…maybe for a day or a week…or maybe, as for some folks, long after you’ve discovered it. You’ll be itching to understand what it’s about even just a little bit. Your mind will try to make sense of Paul Jaisini and/or Gleitzeit, it will want to, but will fail miserably. Frustration and anger will start setting in. I know because that’s how it was for me and every person that tried. The deeper you dig, the more you try to figure it out, the more confused, overwhelmed, baffled, and perplexed you’ll get. I guess for the people that attempt to understand the Paul Jaisini and Gleitzeit thing or debunk it, my advice is: DON’T EVEN TRY. DON’T GO THERE. IT’S NOT FOR YOU. The sleepless nights, the uncertainty, the questions and ideas that start invading your head, the horror of “waking up” from normality and regularity, the trauma of moving from one dimension to another… is not worth it. Well, for me it was worth it, but not for others. They claim it’s crazy and even dangerous for the mind, Paul Jaisini’s Gleitzeit. Well, sure, I mean you gotta break some eggs to make an omelette, dontchya? So, Gleitzeit is the omelette and all parties involved in GIG (Gleitzeit International Group) are the eggs. Makes sense. Speaking of which, “they” don’t want it to make sense, not even close. As a member of the group, I’m breaking protocol BIG TIME by writing this, by encouraging that you go out there, look this stuff up and figure it out, take away its shield of senselessness and defeat it… for the sake of a better world and future for us all. I hope someone out there hears me….one way or another, it had to be said…. Stelly Riesling

 

Not quite sure which building this is

London headquarters of Channel Four Television, including offices, post-production edit suites, restaurant, screening room and originally a studio. Built to designs by Richard Rogers Partnership (partner in charge, John Young), 1992-1994. Structural engineers Ove Arup and Partners.

 

The mapping of the listed building does not reflect the full extent of its below-ground footprint.

Reasons for Designation

124-126 Horseferry Road, built as the headquarters of Channel Four Television to designs by Richard Rogers Partnership 1992-94, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

 

Architectural interest:

 

* as an elegant work of the High-tech movement, displaying many of its key principles, such as the separation of services from the spaces served, the use of prefabricated elements and a technological aesthetic based upon expressed structure and exposed services; * for its logical L-plan with a dynamic, highly articulated corner composition and entrance sequence, dominated by a curved, top-hung, structural glass wall; * for the sophistication of its design, in which intricate details, executed in a consistent palette of materials, are integrated into a rigorous modular framework; * for its sequence of three linked interior spaces, centring on the dramatic full-height entrance atrium, to which are connected the fan-shaped restaurant and the subterranean screening room and foyer; * as a late-C20 exemplar of both a prestigious, owner-occupied headquarters building and a television centre, equipped primarily for the commissioning, but not the production of television programming, as per Channel 4’s remit; * for its designed flexibility to allow for changing technologies and operational needs, combining set-piece interiors with adaptable office workspaces; * for its degree of survival, with little alteration externally or to its key interior spaces.

 

Historic interest:

 

* as the purpose-built headquarters of Channel 4, a key player in television broadcasting history, commercially funded but with a public-service remit to provide innovative and diverse programming; * as an important British work by Richard Rogers Partnership, a practice of international renown led by one of Britain’s most celebrated architects.

History

124-126 Horseferry Road was built in 1992-1994 as the headquarters for Channel 4, a publicly owned, commercially-funded public service broadcaster, established with a remit to make innovative, experimental and distinctive programmes. After launching on 2 November 1982, its audience share gradually increased and the station soon outgrew its collection of rented offices in the West End. The switch to digital broadcasting also loomed. The chief executive, Michael Grade, and the chairman, Sir Richard Attenborough, took the decision to build a new headquarters. A suitable site was found at the junction of Horseferry Road and Chadwick Street, and a limited competition held in late 1990.

 

The commission was won by the Richard Rogers Partnership (RRP), who then explored the organisation’s needs through a series of workshops. As Channel 4 was a commissioner and transmitter, but not a producer of programmes, their main requirements were for offices and prestigious spaces to receive clients. The office space was specified to institutional standards so that the building could be readily let or sold in the event of a future move. A 10m deep basement already existed from a previous stalled development, so production and transmission facilities and a minimal studio occupied two subterranean levels, with provision made in the design for adding windows to the lower ground floor in the future, and flooring over the double-height studio to make the space more flexible.

 

RRP proposed a perimeter plan that reinforced the street pattern. Office wings at right angles were hinged by a ‘knuckle’, containing an entrance atrium and restaurant, with offices above. Behind the building a public garden was created, framed to the south and east by a separate housing development which fulfilled a planning condition set by Westminster City Council. In 2007 ‘the big 4’, a metal sculpture designed by Nick Knight and based on the channel’s current on-air identity was erected in the small piazza at the front of the building.

 

Richard Rogers was one of a group of British architects responsible for the High-tech movement, which originated in the 1960s with in a series of loose-fit industrial structures. By the 1980s High-tech architecture was increasingly being translated into urban contexts and cultural commissions. 124-126 Horseferry Road demonstrates many of its key principles, such as the separation of services from the spaces served, the use of prefabricated elements and a technological aesthetic based upon expressed structure and exposed services. It was Rogers’ first central London job after the Lloyd’s Building (1978-1986, listed Grade I), a seminal work of High-tech architecture. The image of Lloyds’ seems to have loomed large. For John Young, partner in charge, 124-126 Horseferry Road is ‘a building in the Lloyds mould.’ (Powell, 2001, 173).

 

The building’s drama is focussed on the entrance front; its transparency revealing the principal interior spaces, giving views right through the building to the public garden, and glimpses of working life within. ‘The effect, especially at night, is televisual’, commented Jonathan Glancey, (The Independent, 1994). The office wings are conventional in their planning and the building was designed to meet the bespoke needs of the client, as well as to be sufficiently adaptable should those needs change, or the building be sold.

 

124-126 Horseferry Road was a BBC Design Awards Finalist 1996 and won a RIBA National Award 1995; Royal Fine Art Commission Award 1995 and Civic Trust Award 1996. Since its opening the building has undergone several phases of internal refurbishment, including, in about 2010, the flooring-over of the double-height basement studio and repurposing of the space for various other uses. Externally, the building is largely unaltered.

 

Television as a broadcasting phenomenon began in the 1930s, with the first regular television service in the world introduced on 2 November 1936 by the BBC. The BBC’s monopoly was broken by the Television Act 1954, which created commercially funded Independent Television (ITV), served by regional franchised networks. Channel 4 arrived in 1982, established under the provisions of the 1980 Broadcasting Act. The act provided for a new, fourth, channel with a remit to ‘encourage innovation and experiment in the form and content of programmes’; its output was to be distinctive, offering programming for tastes not catered for by the commercial broadcaster ITV.

 

Its organisational model was equally distinctive, funded by advertising but adhering to a public service remit, it didn’t produce its own programming, instead commissioning and purchasing material from independent production companies. It employed commissioning editors to nurture the various strands and genres of the channel’s output and made particular efforts to employ people outside the television industry who could bring new and non-traditional perspectives. This meant new voices and new talents, and a greater plurality of programming and representation, including minorities. Channel 4 still proclaims its role as a ‘disruptive, innovative force in UK Broadcasting’ (Channel4.com, accessed 3 December 2021). Channel 4 has been major contributor to the British cultural landscape of the last four decades.

 

Richard Rogers, later Lord Rogers of Riverside, (1933-2021) was born in Florence. He trained at the Architectural Association and Yale University before setting up the Team 4 practice with Norman Foster and others in 1962. Their house for his in-laws, Creekvean in Feock, Cornwall (1964-1967) was listed Grade II in 1998 and upgraded to Grade II* in 2002. Rogers subsequently formed an architectural practice with his then wife, Su Rogers, and from 1970-1977, worked with the Italian architect Renzo Piano. Their Pompidou Centre building in Paris, which opened in 1977, is a major landmark of the High-tech style. Richard Rogers Partnership was formed the same year, with John Young, a veteran team member from Team 4 days, as one of several partners. The Lloyd’s Building together with the Pompidou sealed an international reputation. Other major works by Rogers include: the European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg (1989-1995), Terminal 4 at Barajas Airport in Madrid (2004), the National Assembly of Wales in Cardiff (2005) and Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport (2008). Rogers won the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1985, was knighted in 1991 and was created Baron Rogers of Riverside in 1996. In 2007 the Richard Rogers Partnership was renamed Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners to reflect the practice‘s succession plan.

Details

Once national, now regional, headquarters of Channel Four Television, including offices, post-production edit suites, restaurant, screening room and originally a studio. Built to designs by Richard Rogers Partnership (partner in charge, John Young),1992-1994. Structural engineers Ove Arup and Partners.

 

MATERIALS: the majority of the building has a reinforced concrete frame with metal and glass cladding. The conference rooms have a steel pin-jointed frame and the atrium frontage is of glass, suspended from above and held in tension by a steel cabling system devised by Arup.

 

PLAN: the building is L-shaped in plan, occupying the corner between Horseferry Road to the west and Chadwick Street to the north, with rectangular office wings fronting each road and a concave quadrant knuckle connecting the two and framing a small piazza facing the road junction. The building has four floors above a basement and lower-ground floor levels. To the rear are two terraces; one at ground-floor level, above the larger footprint of the two lower floors, and one at third floor, where the footprint of the central knuckle is set back from the floors below.

 

Each office wing has two internal service cores and externally-expressed stair towers at each end. There is a lift tower at the far end of the Chadwick Street wing and three wall-climber lifts facing Horseferry Road, adjacent to the piazza. The basement level is given over to plant, storage, staff well-being facilities and edit suites. The lower-ground floor is a mixture of open-plan office space, meeting rooms and staff facilities; the main area of interest is the fan-shaped screening room with its circular foyer beneath the piazza, and stair connecting it to the atrium above. The ground floor contains the atrium reception area and large curved restaurant on a slightly lower level behind, overlooking the garden; the office blocks are given over to open-plan work space and a loading bay. First, second and third floors are mainly open-plan work space, with some meeting rooms and private offices as well. Key aspects of the building’s layout are original, including the screening room and foyer, reception atrium and restaurant. There has been reconfiguration in other parts, in particular the flooring-over of the studio, reconfiguration of the editing-suites and the removal of rows of perimeter offices.

 

EXTERIOR: the building’s key aspect faces onto the Horseferry Road/ Chadwick Street junction. The ends of the office wings are pulled back from the corner and the piazza is framed by a High-tech composition of glass and graphite-coloured steel, aluminium and cladding panels, punctuated by vertical flashes of red-painted structural steelwork. The full-height, concave, structural glass wall of the atrium is at the centre, suspended from above by a steel frame. Flanking it to either side are radiused stair towers. The stair towers have bands of glazing following the line of the stair within, almost uninterrupted by vertical supports because the cladding is supported internally on rods hung from above. To the left is a stack of conference rooms with glazed end walls, elevated and supported by a red pin-jointed steel frame. To the right is a stack of glazed lift lobbies serving a bank of three external ‘wall-climber’ lifts running along red steelwork; above are boxed-out service elements and a quasi-Constructivist transmission tower, creating a strong vertical element in the composition. Boiler flues add further interest to the roofline.

 

The piazza has shallow steps and flanking ramps which lead to a circular space immediately in front of the building. The centre of this is occupied by a circular skylight lighting the foyer of the screening room below; a bridge sheltered by a glass canopy stretches across it to a pair of revolving entrance doors. The sculpture, ‘the big 4’* stands towards the front edge of the piazza.

 

The office wings are clad with glazed panels of powder-coated aluminium, at ground floor these are set back behind the exposed concrete posts of the building’s frame, and above they are jettied out slightly, meeting at the corners with narrow, vertical, fully-glazed units. The panels each have four rebated horizontal glazed units divided by a fin-like transom, the lowest unit also having a band of sunscreen steel mesh in front. The floor plates are faced with panelled steel units. The facing components meet with a narrow shadow gap and the overall effect is of a modelled grid with a horizontal emphasis. The rear elevations, both to the office wings and the convexly curved knuckle, follow this aesthetic.

 

INTERIOR: the atrium is the building’s key public-facing interior space. The curved, full-height glazed wall is held in tension by a complex network of steel cables and suspended from above by exposed red steelwork. Set back from the wall, and above the ground-floor reception area, are curved cantilevered walkways at each floor, open to the atrium and floored in concrete panels set with circular glass blocks; behind, offices are enclosed by glazed walls.

 

Behind the reception, at a slightly lower level, is the staff restaurant. This has been refurbished a number of times but retains its distinctive fan shape, exposed concrete ceiling and glazed walls looking out onto the terrace.

 

The screening room, beneath the piazza, has a fan-shaped auditorium and circular foyer. Both spaces have been refurbished but retain perforated steel acoustic panelling and exposed concrete structural elements. The walls of the anti-room are hung with a chain curtain and the space is lit from above by the circular skylight in the piazza pavement; the glazing is held in a steel, umbrella-like structure. A concrete stair with steel balustrade leads from the foyer up to the atrium above.

 

The stairs in the four towers are dog-legged, red with stainless steel tubular balustrades; the treads and risers are of folded steel, supported at the half landings by flanged I-beam newels.

 

The interior most relevant to the building’s special interest are addressed in the paragraphs above. Throughout the rest of the building, the smooth round concrete posts and other concrete structural elements are visible, but spaces have been reconfigured and refurbished to suit operational needs.

 

* Pursuant to s1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that ‘the big 4’ sculpture on the building’s piazza is not of special architectural or historic interest, however any works which have the potential to affect the character of the listed building as a building of special architectural or historic interest may still require LBC and this is a matter for the LPA to determine.

Mechanical and functional requirements worked out between TBS and Citizen シチズン Watch Company, Tokyo.

Developer: TBS Tokyo Broadcasting System, Akasaka, Tokyo

Date: Installed December, 1992.

 

Hundertwasser comment about the work:

This monument is a token, a landmark serving as an ambassador for a peace treaty between men and nature. (...) A consciousness of eternal cycles in harmony with nature and human creation becomes vital, just as timeless constant values, the knowledge of the cosmos where no up and no down exists, no right and no left. It is not the time, which is important but the cycle which develops in organical, beautiful form. Time should create new life, slowly, in spiral form, vegetativ and creative. Time should not destroy past time, should not create last panic before the time of tomorrow. The idea of counting time is a human misleading idea, an invention like the straight line, but there is only eternity developing in an organical cycle. (...) The same water is permanently flowing through the purification plant. The way of the water through the roots of the plants takes about 1 hour. The roots of these waterplants are producing oxygen and are turning what we call dirt into plant substance. We become witness of a permanent purification and renewal process in harmony with the laws of nature. (excerpt from Hundertwasser's text of August 1992) (from: Hundertwasser 1928-2000, Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 2, Taschen, Cologne, 2002, p. 1261)

 

Information:

Hundertwasser designed the ecological monument for the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) in commemoration of the company's fiftieth anniversary in 2001. The digital display of a Citizen Clock, which could be read from both sides, counted down the days to the anniversary. The monument was erected on the TBS grounds in Midoriyama/Yokohama in December 1992 and moved to Akasaka in 1994. The accompanying program upon arrival of this event with the theme "Our Beloved Planet, Earth" was focusing on the everchanging Japan, the global environment and mankind. (Source: hundertwasser.com).

 

Public Clock Photography by Arjan Richter

Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting. ©2023 SDPB

WATCH! Magazine photo shoot with Kaley Cuoco for Sept /Oct 20120 Photo by Patrick Demarchelier ©2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Langham Place, London

I play ukulele in livestreams at www.younow.com/UglyUker and www.twitch.tv/UglyUker

Love in October

The Break Room

Grand Rapids, Michigan

17.07.2007

Canon EOS Film camera with Ilford FP4 film and Canon 50mm F1.4 lens .

 

Developed in Ilfosol 3 (1:14) for 9.30 minutes

This is where The Men In Pink is going to shot.

Well in micro-scale.

I can remember when this was all BBC car park...

Bit short of uploads at the moment, this is a shot from a few months back.

I do love this building, it is made up of rusty coloured panels and was voted the best tall building in the world for 2010

 

I came across this building a couple of weeks ago whilst looking for some architecture to photograph for our camera club annual dpi competition.

 

It was a drab day so I have played around in photoshop to try & bring out the colour in the panels, they are actually made of rusted steel.

 

I love the zig zag way they have built this and am going to return on a better day for another go :)

 

Have a great start to the week!!

Broadcasting House - the Headquarters of the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation) -in Portland Place, London - painted by Stephen B Whatley in September 1992.

 

One of a series of the artist's architectural paintings that he uniquely paints on location, this painting was purchased by the BBC months after its completion; one of 5 architectural paintings by Stephen B Whatley that the Corporation has in its collection.

 

The BBC also acquired Stephen's paintings of 'Bush House - Tribute to 60 Years of The BBC World Service' (1992) and BBC Television Centre (1994); before going on to commission two BBC interiors from the artist in 2001: 'The BBC Radio Theatre' (which is situated in Broadcasting House) and 'The Top Of The Pops Studio' (painted on location at BBC Television Centre, during rehearsals & filming of the music programme).

 

BBC Broadcasting House. 1992 by Stephen B Whatley

Oil on canvas

30 x 24in/76 x 61cm

Collection of BBC Heritage, London, UK

www.stephenbwhatley.com

 

Weimar, Germany 2012

Portland Place, London

BBC New Broadcasting House

BBC 2 Springwatch 2016 at RSPB Minsmere

Broadcasting Tower, Leeds

Aberdeen, Feb. 21-22. (Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited.) Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting. ©2014 SDPB

Photo of KPIX Consumer Reporter / Meteorologist / Anchor Julie Watts

The Eighth Doctor's alternative costume, as seen in The Flood comic.

 

One of my two big creations I displayed at Brickworld this year. This is a project I've been waiting to put up for a long time now.

  

The Eighth Doctor is one of my favourite incarnations of Doctor Who, and I really love this version of the TARDIS interior. The mix of different styles, Edwardian, Victorian, STEAMPUNK even... it's just amazing. Enjoy!

  

*Doctor Who, TARDIS and all related names, images, etc. are property of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

   

Canon EOS Film camera with Ilford FP4 film and Canon 50mm F1.4 lens .

 

Developed in Ilfosol 3 (1:14) for 9.30 minutes

 

Broadcasting Place is new Leeds Met accommodation on Woodhouse Lane, just north of the centre of Leeds. Where the BBC used to be. The covering is something called Cor-Ten which I think is a steel process that allows the surface to rust in a manner that protects the bit underneath.

MJP Architects, Sheppard Robson, George Val Myer