I think that an interesting topic for our class to research would be street art and architecture in New York City. We’ve all seen various forms of street art whether it be murals, graffiti, or sticker art. While there is a large debate on whether some forms of street art are vandalism, they nevertheless have influences that cannot be denied. Various forms of street art can be seen throughout New York City and obviously differ from neighborhood to neighborhood. For our class project, we could search out various examples of street art and examine the influences behind it.
Many forms of street art have ethnic influences. Tying in with our neighborhood visits and Berger’s book, we can examine how neighborhoods with various ethnic backgrounds have different types of street art. We could study the subject of various murals and compare it to the religions and ethnicities associated with a general neighborhood. Immigration would obviously be tied into this as well because many examples of street art would involve influences from the immigrants home countries in terms of subjects and art styles.
For our project, we could utilize many different forms of media to present our findings. We could take pictures or videos, create slideshows, conduct interviews with street artists, and many more. It would be easy to present many different forms of visual findings on this subject on a class website.
