The Story Behind The Story: Graffiti Tech Art

I had a story out on Wired today, where I tagged along with tech-graffiti artists as they showed me the newest innovations in street art. (Get it, ‘tagged’ along – god I’m funny). Anyways, they call themselves the Graffiti Research Lab and they are a division of Eyebeam.

The story itself is interesting in its ability to document an innovative method of guerrilla art, but the
story behind me getting this story is also a lesson in journalism — I’m just not sure what the lesson is yet. But included in this little post I’ll add extra photos that Wired didn’t publish and the story behind how I finally got this story published.

Not too long ago I had a post up called “Tech Art” which was about a visit I had to the Eyebeam open lab hours. While there I saw some of their work and very briefly met Jason Kottke. I took some notes and photos, but as my previous post said, I didn’t get a story out of it. But I did get some business cards and kept them on hand.

Sure enough, maybe a month or two after I visited, I noticed a new site called “Graffiti Research Lab” and I recognized who was behind it immediately. It was one of the R&D people at Eybeam that I had met a few months earlier at Eyebeam. At the time he talked to me a bit about research into graffiti, but
the “lab” itself hadn’t been established. It was just the kernal of an idea.

After talking with Wired we (the editors and I) decided the best way to cover the story was to go out with these guys one night and write a first person story about it. I can understand this decision, because it makes for a more colorful story, and the info about the G.R.L was already out there — Eyebeam has it’s own popular publishing method.

So the next step was to find out when they were going to “test” out their technology next and see if I could follow. The guys were really nice and I made a friday night out of it. Along with my story, which came out a little later than I’d hoped, they filmed the outing and put it up in their website. If you watch the intro really close you’ll see me twice. The first time you only see the back of my beanie. But in the second shot you see me walking, straight on, with a pen in my mouth (I was taking notes throughout the whole thing, and my mouth often becomes my pen-holder).

The actual text for the story was written the day after the event, but then I had to wait 2-3 days to get some short answers on quick questions from the two main characters in my story. Then I turned it into Wired. Like I said, it came out a little later than I would have liked, but what’s a freelance writer to do. Point is, I have basically been working on this piece for over a month. I’m just glad that the story didn’t get killed. There was a brief moment where I was convinced it was going to be killed. Luckily, the first person aspect of the story was its saving grace — it added a little bit of coverage that
nobody else did.

I hope to keep in contact with the folks at Eyebeam. I have been a big fan of their reblog for some time, and I see good things coming out of their facility. No matter what, this was again one of those experineces that I could only have as a freelance writer for technology, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The daily science grind at Seed is treating me okay, but these little gem stories every now and then that require hands on reporting really do it for me.

For insight on the pictures, read the story! It’ll explain what everyone is doing.