Walls of Shoreditch

June 2024 - ongoing

wallsofshoreditch.com

All visual elements on city walls are transient.

Walls of Shoreditch recognises the importance of capturing this rapidly changing urban environment and its fleeting narratives before they are lost.

It constructs a visual identity of Shoreditch through 88,000+ archived wall objects from Google Street View over the past decade, retrived by a computer vision model.

This digital archive aims to remember, value, and preserve all the works created by those who have communicated through the medium of a wall. 

The subjective data collection empowers users to curate narratives, with contributions making the archive evolve, thus investigating authorship, bias and subjectivity.

How was it made?

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What's in the archive?

In analysing the street, I had to first identify what to take from it. Thus, there were several discussions regarding what and how to categorise the elements of a wall. This was the starting point of my criteria and curatorial voice, that started shaping the data within three overarching categories.

For each element, I established which type of data I would delve into in detail, such as location, timestamp, dimensions, and any relevant contextual information.

Audience

Who is this project for?

Graduate Show @ Central Saint Martins

June 2024 | UAL Showcase

The project has different targets and features.

It is aimed at a niche of people and/or organisations interested in one or more of the following:

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• Tourists
  The tourist can create his own curatorial collection, i.e. 10 graffiti, 3 shop signs, 6 artworks. At this point, the user will have a collection of objects around Shoreditch, and a personalised itinerary will be generated (using the coordinates of each object) to explore the area of Shoreditch, interact with the archive while in the streets and promote the user to add contributions. Almost replacing a guided tour of the area, which is something quite popular in the area.
  

• Locals
  By rediscovering your own neighbourhood and getting to know what surrounds you, they might know who made the different elements in the archive, thus contributing to the archive and are more intimate with the area.
  

• Londoners
  Niche of people emotionally attached to the city, who appreciate the various different areas of London. They have witnessed its evolution and are curious about its growth and changes over time.
  
  

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• Local Governmental Entities
  Identify the distinction between commercial and “unauthorised” (art) visual elements on walls
  
  Connecting with the local community, which expresses its thoughts on walls: e.g. political conflicts, housing issues etc.

• Museums
  Organisations like “Museum of London” that are interested in archiving and preserving cultural heritage
  

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• Agencies and Companies
  Having the power to analyze, in any geographical area:
      • Identify its change through time
      • Identify the various targets of past advertising, marketing and branding campaigns
      • Analyze the target of what the walls say by using Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
      • For Talent Leads to scout artists and designers to hire
  
  

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And moreover in a niche of people interested in: Graffiti, Street Art, Data Visualization and Information design

The project was put together from scratch in just two months.
It started in April and was delivered to complete my Bachelor's degree in June.

It was presented at Central Saint Martins during the Graduate Show, along with the rest of the installation, there was a large white MDF piece on which the audience could leave their mark, thus making the exhibition more engaging.

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Publication

Handmade A4 Publication


The other outcome of the project was a handmade, Swiss-bound, hand-stitched publication I made, with roughly 18,000 words, with chapters related to WOS with critical and theoretical analysis.