Colourful and quickly changing: contemporary graffiti can be considered the chameleon skin of any urban landscape. Even though many modern graffiti might violate basic principles of acceptable social behaviour, some also have an evident artistic character. This tension explains why contemporary graffiti can be so polarising and why they intrigue. This talk will first introduce various forms of graffiti and define shortcomings in much of the scholarly research on (modern and ancient) graffiti. At that point, the stage is set to introduce project INDIGO. INDIGO (IN-ventory and DI-sseminate G-raffiti along the d-O-naukanal) was a two-year academic project launched in September 2021 through funding from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. INDIGO pushed the status quo in documenting, managing and understanding extensive graffiti-scapes, for which the distinctive graffiti along circa 13 km of Vienna's Danube Canal served as a case study. INDIGO wanted to ensure this graffiti-scape's digital survival and interdisciplinary investigation by creating a long-term, accurate, exhaustive, open-access and interactive online archive. Therefore, this talk will mainly detail the methodological and logistical developments created to deal with INDIGO's technical- and more humanistic-oriented aspects. However, some project bottlenecks and non-achievements will also be discussed.

This presentation was given on 04/04/2024 during a research lunch at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage (ACDH-CH) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Vienna, Austria.