Takahiro Yamaguchi: Smartest graffiti artist

Thanks to over twenty years of serious artistic consideration by galleries, museums and waves of global creators, graffiti is no longer considered an act of anti-social scrawling. Tokyo's Takahiro Yamaguchi is one of the leading artists pushing the graffiti concept into brand new directions. He acts as the head of Japan's Graffiti Research Lab (GRL) chapter, a group that uses portable high-powered projectors in mini-vans to cover skyscrapers in laser tags.

Yamaguchi is currently receiving attention for his "multi-sensory font" called "Shibuya" which is being exhibited in the foyer of the NTT ICC Inter Communication Center in Tokyo. Yamaguchi physically traced out giant letters throughout downtown Tokyo on a bicycle (in Shibuya) using GPS tracking and Google Earth. Multiple sensors, audio recorders and a video camera allow the font to be watched as video, listened to as an MP3 and explored as a GPS graph.

We spoke with Yamaguchi earlier in the year.

CNNGo: Have you ever been arrested?

Takahiro Yamaguchi: No. Maybe nobody realizes what I am doing yet.

CNNGo: Where do you stand on the "Is graffiti art?" debate?

Yamaguchi: Basically, graffiti is not art. For contemporary artists who used graffiti, like Basquiat or Keith Haring, their works are defined as art by the modern art world, not by the graffiti world.

CNNGo: What was your earliest project working with technology and graffiti?

Yamaguchi: My first project was tagging with electrical sounds through a module. I made 100 units and placed them around the city. Normally graffiti tries to change the look of the landscape. I wanted to change the soundscape.

CNNGo: What inspired you to make a multi-sensory font?

Yamaguchi: When I saw Saber's huge graffiti work on Google Earth I felt a real sense of exploration and discovery. There were no longer boundaries. That had a really strong effect on me. I rode around tokyo with a GPS and spelt out the words "the invisible is eternal." This work cannot be seen but my action can be recorded. After that I began this current project, the idea of creating graffiti people can use.

CNNGo: So how do people actually use this?

Yamaguchi: At the beginning this project was just about creating a regular digital font which people could use on their computers. But the process was so interesting I began to include that too: the streaming video and sounds that I recorded as I traced the letters. That is what I call "supportive material" for the font. It makes the font denser and more interesting.

CNNGo: What comes next?

Yamaguchi: Next I want to work on a robot, a kind of tagging machine. Something more interactive. The robot would be full of sensors and write something (which may be completely unreadable and undefinable) based on its sensations from an anonymous passerby. Basically as someone walks in front of the robot, it activates and writes something. Anyone can be a graffiti writer. It raises the question, if you take intention and identity away from graffiti, is it still graffiti?