Project indigo – document, disseminate & analyse a graffiti-scape

Graffiti is a short-lived form of heritage balancing between tangible and intangible, offensive and pleasant. Graffiti makes people laugh, wonder, angry, think. These conflicting traits are all present along Vienna's Donaukanal (Eng. Danube Canal), a recreational hotspot – located in the city's heart – famous for its endless display of graffiti. The graffiti-focused heritage science project INDIGO aims to build the basis to systematically document, monitor, and analyse circa 13 km of Donaukanal graffiti in the next decade. The first part of this paper details INDIGO's goals and overarching methodological framework, simultaneously placing it into the broader landscape of graffiti research. The second part of the text concentrates on INDIGO's graffiti documentation activities. Given the project's aim to create a spatially, spectrally, and temporally accurate record of all possible mark-makings attached in (il)legal ways to the public urban surfaces of the Donaukanal, it seems appropriate to provide insights on the photographic plus image-based modelling activities that form the foundation of INDIGO's graffiti recording strategy. The text ends with some envisioned strategies to streamline image acquisition and process the anticipated hundreds of thousands of images.