Graffiti Without Vandalism: 5 Kinds of Amazing and Ephemeral Urban Light Art

Street artists are using simple glowsticks to produce an amazing variety of light art and graffiti. These tags, comics, creatures and shapes fade as fast as they appear, unless they is captured by time-lapse photography. Like traditional graffiti and street art, light art comes in many forms. Unlike most graffiti, however, there is no one to complain about being tagged!

Tags: Of course, an easy and straightforward form of light art is tagging. Glowsticks can be used to trace letters, and muscle memory takes over to create these shapes.

Cartoons: Creating light art cartoons is a little more tricky, and also brings more creativity into place. The above image (right) shows a clever integration of the figure with its context.

Creatures: Light art can also be used to animate or give life to inanimate urban objects, from garbage cans to post office boxes. Since the light fades right away, only those who see the photos get a glimpse of the secret life of these light art creatures.

Shapes: Light art shapes require particular attention to camera view and alignment. Pulled off right, though, they can highlight, reinforce or interpret an urban space in simple but powerful ways.

Other: Of course, the sky is the limit. The above image cleverly integrates the artist into the scene - he seems to be playing a game with his pet monster. Light art is easy to start experimenting with - disposable glow sticks that last for hours are only a few dollars.

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Posted by Urbanist July 5th, 2007
Graffiti, Street Art, Urban Art, Urban Images
Comments: 17

Comments

Comment from Adrian keys
Time: July 6, 2007, 5:25 am

Some fresh entertainment for you…especially for the kids.

BTW…that header definitely enhances the theme of the blog…and adds a lot of life…

Comment from WebUrbanist
Time: July 6, 2007, 2:07 pm

Thanks, glad you like the header - we wanted something that conveyed the chaos and unpredictability, as well as the excitement, of urban life.

Comment from Laura
Time: July 7, 2007, 8:08 am

These are amazing! I’ve not seen anything quite like this.

Comment from WebUrbanist
Time: July 7, 2007, 2:15 pm

That’s part of what is amazing about them to me, actually: the fact that you really don’t see these around town, because they are a unique combination of time, place and time-lapse photography. Now when I walk around at night I can ‘imagine’ where people might have done clever light art, but who knows? Neat either way!

Comment from thurmanoliver
Time: July 8, 2007, 6:50 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW_9SYaWAQg …here’s a video of a commercial some of my friends did for sprint utilizing this method…it’s pretty sweet to check out…

Comment from Anonymous
Time: July 8, 2007, 11:04 pm

Also similar to the works done here:

http://tochka.jp/pikapika/

Comment from WebUrbanist
Time: July 9, 2007, 12:07 am

Great links guys … both are nice videos, one very clean and the other highly playful. If any other readers want to submit relevant links like these please feel free.

Comment from Jeff
Time: July 9, 2007, 12:58 am

hey, this is a great site … cool image collections, i really like all the stuff under the ’street art’ tag

Comment from WebUrbanist
Time: July 9, 2007, 12:11 pm

Thanks Jeff! That’s a good reminder: people who like this post (and it has been getting a lot of attention) should be sure to check out other street art on-site via the ’street art’ category on the right hand sidebar.

Comment from CaptainPlanet
Time: August 23, 2007, 9:02 pm

(o_0) neat

Comment from jazz
Time: September 24, 2007, 7:10 am

very nice and cool

Comment from raziel
Time: October 22, 2007, 8:58 am

It’s nice!