Firenze Digital Graffiti leverages technology to save monuments

Autography is the first case of anti-graffiti awareness that promotes graffiti itself, but in a digital and lasting form

The Florentine administration, since March 2016, has decided to fight street artists by leveraging a technological weapon of prevention. The goal is to save the testimonies of visitors without these, however, physically damaging the monuments and works of art, but to publish them instead on the site Autography.

The initiative is not only aimed at raising public awareness of the artistic preservation of the unique beauty of Florence - repository of a cultural heritage among the most important in the world - often a victim, like other cities of art, of vandalism, in particular the unhealthy habit of writing their names on the walls of monuments and cathedrals. So near Santa Maria del Fiore two tablets have been installed where anyone can write their name - or what they want - on a digital reproduction of the wall of the famous cathedral. An initiative that - according to its promoters - is working: in the space of 12 months, 18,000 digital graffiti pieces have been created and a decrease in the number of writings on the ancient walls has been noted.

Florence one of the cradles of Italian culture

Leaving a sign of one's visit on a monument or a work of art represents a behavior that denotes - even if not to those who carry it out - a lack of respect for cultural heritage. And not everyone is aware of this. The initiative promoted by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, thanks to Autography, attempts to transfer the visitor's desire to leave a sign of their passage from the real world - physically on monuments and cathedrals - to a virtual world and a digital image. Se l’obiettivo dei vandali è aspirare “all’immortalità”, il suo contributo – tramite l’applicazione Autography – guadagna l’immortalità desiderata, facendo risparmiare tempo e soldi alle autorità preposte alla cancellazione e al restauro delle parti deturpate.

Firenze-Digital-Graffiti-Autography-esempio.jpgFonte foto: Autography

Ecco un esempio di Graffito Digitale

Immortalità garantita ai graffiti digitali

Un’idea intelligente e originale, insomma, che sembra lentamente funzionare. Il monumento e l’opera d’arte si salvano dal graffito”fisico” ma il graffito “digitale”, tramite l’applicazione, viene conservato guadagnandosi l’immortalità. Questa applicazione consente di lasciare il proprio graffito digitale in una delle postazioni con tablet posizionate ad hoc sul Campanile di Giotto e sulla Cupola del Brunelleschi. And it gives free rein to the imagination by making available - like any other graphic editing software - to write and draw with various styles of pen, marker, brush, spray and pencil, and to choose from a series of colors and surfaces made available. The defacement, of course, does not last long, but in digital form the graffiti is destined to last for centuries like the documents in the historical archives of the Opera del Duomo. It's an example that other Italian art cities, such as Rome and Florence, could adopt.