Hackers, meet graffiti writers

When I met Evan in Paris and peeked into a world of graffiti, hackers, 3d-tag-sculptures, lasers and sophisticated DYI hardware devices,  I left with a geek heart pounding. Heavily.
I thought “we should get behind this project. This is all about doing cool shit on the web!”. Even more so because GML elegantly reaches out to new groups of people and shows them the potential of free culture and the power of web standards in a fun and visually appealing way – but also because it challenges fundamental values in the street art and graffiti world.
Evan came to the Drumbeat Paris event and presented the GML project, impressing everyone there; long-term Mozilla contributors and newcomers alike. Here’s the video from Evans speedgeek  – apologies for bad sound:

.ogg – version (Please add subtitles and translation!)

I joined the GML mailinglist and watched the project evolve,  following Evans twitter account which he used for distributing GML-related tasks. The more I got under the hood of the project and its offspring, the more it made sense for me and Mozilla to get involved.
But let’s back up a bit. GML is not really a project. It’s a standard, that powers a bunch of projects, of which only some are directly related to Evan and the FAT Lab crew. At the core

“Graffiti Markup Language (.gml) is a universal, XML based, open file format designed to store graffiti motion data (x and y coordinates and time). The format is designed to maximize readability and ease of implementation, even for hobbyist programmers, artists and graffiti writers”.

reads http://graffitimarkuplanguage.com, which was launched this week, and will serve as a hub for GML-based projects.

There are already quite a few and they are incredibly creative and convincing. Take Eyewriter, which uses DYI hardware hacks and free and open software to allow former, now paralyzed graffiti artists Tempt One to write aagin – with his eyes! Or Golan Levin‘s Robotic Graffiti Tagger, which “prints” GML-based graffiti motion paths. Take webmarker, which allows you to draw and share your GML-based tags on any website. Not to mention the fascinating Graffiti Analysis project, which recently launched version 3.0 and announced a challenge to design a cheap passive input device.

So, one might ask: why is this important? Because GML shows why the open web, why protocols and standards matter in a very practical and hands-on way. For those of us already “in on it” – those of us who love the open web and work to protect it – this is self-evident. But for most other people it isn’t necessarily. And this I see GML making a real difference, beyond “just” being great and truly innovative art.

I feel confident betting on GML to do exactly what Drumbeat is supposed to do.  You can expect a LOT of activity from GML people over the next few weeks, so stay tuned! You can join the project on Drumbeat here, or via http://www.graffitimarkuplanguage.com/. Tell your friends, and share the GML love :)