Graffito is a multi-person drawing application, (written by Nick Bryan-Kinns with Jenn Sheridan/BigDog Interactive), which runs on phones (currently only on iPhones). It allows multiple people to draw on the same canvas at the same time. I’ve been working with Graffito as part of a team of various people led by Jenn Sheridan (see the Graffito website for more details).

We ran Graffito at the Vintage @ Goodwood festival, in their late Eighties themed dance ‘tent’, which turned out to actually be a roofless enclosure, which led to much joy with weather! It was very neat though - big name DJs, lots of people dancing, and Graffito was bang in the middle of it, on the big (I think it was 30 foot high) LED screen on the dance floor. It was interesting to be embedded right in the event, essentially allowing random people in the crowd to provide the visuals for their dancing. People seemed to find it very exciting to be allowed to control the visuals themselves.

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People drew lots of different things, including their names, hearts etc. the obligitary penises and swear words (although here the collaborative nature of the system came in, as other people could modify the drawings or words if they felt they weren’t appropriate). A particularly interesting point for me was in the first evening we ran it, when the dancefloor was pretty crowded, and the DJ (A Guy Called Gerald) was playing acid house music, and the visuals people generated really seemed to be matching the music in a good way - like the spliff smoking acid house face below.

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