Interactivity between Art & Social Media

The digital media is a mass communication tool. The internet has appeared rapidly and we have adapted to it really fast too. Street Art has done it also. We can say that the true origins of contemporary mass communications are now enhanced through social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare, and more. 

Original illustrations by Mr Thoms, GIF created by this blogger

                               

How this connection could start? From contemporary's art expert perspective, Maria Brito: "When artists started 'tagging' walls with graffiti in NYC in the late 1960s, most of them wrote their names or aliases and either the name of the street where they lived or the number where they lived,". To go along with this, if we look at street art as a communications system that developed alongside urban growth, provides the perfect lens through which we can examine social media. As social media has developed alongside the rapidly expanding digital movement, it has served as the individual's way of communicating with others. Just as early graffiti artists 'tagged' their names or aliases all over the city, people utilize social media as a way of communicating their thoughts with a constantly expanding community of others. An example of this is that if you know write:#streetart in a social media platform, or directly on the internet, it will pop up a wide content of it.

The street artists have developed very innovative modes of displaying their individual messages in public spaces, using location, imagery, and repetition as tools for reaching the largest audience, and afterwards, is the audience itself who has helped increase the spread of Street Art on social media. Most of it by the methodology of 'tagging' and 'sharing'. I found a really interesting new app to discover located art, which mission is this one.

I found that iHeart a street artist based in Vancouver, has created a series of street composition in which each image examines our relationship with our contemporary culture, social media and its connection to a generation of children. It also has a blog that will get your attention and likewise they sell prints of the art pieces which I thought would be engaging for those art lovers collectors.

Created by A.L.Crego