"Tagging Robot"

"Tagging Robot"

by banksy coney island, nyc

"SMOGGING ROBOT"

BY BANKSY

The context We can find this amazing graffiti artwork on a wall of bricks in Coney Island (NYC), precisely between Stillwell Ave and Neptune Ave. Just like all Banksy's works, also this one is completely surrounded by the urban environment, in fact next to it there are gate valves.

The background There is not a background because it is made up of the brick wall, in fact we can see very well the original wall, ruined in some places, on which Banksy worked. There is only one detail which we can notice on it that is a barcode drawed by the robot (the main character).

The foreground On the foreground we can immediately see a quite large robot as big as a child made of metal that in the features it seems a cartoon character. Its face looks astonished and a little frightened; it has got hands similar to pliers and, in its right one, it is taking a spray can with which it is painting the barcode. It seems it is walking on the sidewalk in fact its feet are covered by real grass. Its arms and legs are tubes and his head is a cube. On it there is also a little antenna which makes it more and more technological. The subject is very realistic thanks to the shadows on it.

Personal interpretation In my opinion this artwork is the representation of our modern society in which we are by now becoming more and more dependent by technology and devices. In fact the robot could feauture a graffiti artist and the barcode his artwork. Therefore, from my standpoint this picture shows that nowadays codes and everything about informatic is more and more important and, often, we forget that there was a time when people could live without all these things. Following another idea we could think the robot is simbolyzing that everything is completely controlled by machines. Actually a factory made the robot which is drawing a barcode using a spray can, it too built in a mill! So it comes naturally to wonder:" Would we still be able to survive if all the avant-gardes we own weren't there anymore?

Inquisitiveness This artwork was created in October, 2013 during Banksy's artistic marathon called "Better Out Than In" in which he painted one picture a day for all the month in a lot of different quartiers in New York City.