“Generative artifacts, graffiti archaeology, and interactive chaos, anyone?” — Wild Bill recommends these highly addictive, interactive websites for your personal entertainment, enjoyment, and enrichment:

Gallery of Computation

This site peeled my hat back. I am completely enamoured and will most likely spend vast amounts of time exploring the endless creative potential opened up through this remarkable online experience. The Gallery of Computation takes computer-generated graphical artifacts and algorithmic image processing to a distant universe. Infinite thanks to Jared Tarbell for sharing his inspiring world with us.

Graffiti Archaeology

Here is another fascinating website at which one could spend countless hours surfing and learning. As avid graffiti enthusiasts, we were immediately hooked on this remarkably interactive presentation of society’s most unappreciated art form. Chronologically organized, Graffiti Archaeology is an insightful online documentation revealing localized patterns of urban expression within various graffiti subcultures. As the site says, "Graffiti Archaeology is a project devoted to the study of graffiti-covered walls as they change over time. The core of the project is a time-lapse collage, made of photos of graffiti taken at the same location by many different photographers over a span of several years. Most of the photos are from San Francisco, over a timespan from the late 1990’s to the present."

Splatter

Splatter is a fun interactive Flash application enabling users to splatter virtually vectorized viscous globs of sloppy, splattering lines. Or something. The program follows the user’s cursor coordinates around the screen, leaving a continuous flow of digital "paint", which flows at a rate determined by that of the cursor. Splatter is extreme fun for the common surfer, and perhaps esoterically useful for graphic designers and web developers. Also check out the offline version of Splatter, available for download here.

CanvasPaint

Finally, check out this online emulation of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Paint program. Firefox 2 and Opera 9 users enjoy the option of saving created images to a local hard drive. Other users may create images but not save them. Besides demonstrating some elite programming skills, CanvasPaint is also a very handy tool to have available online. Indeed, online apps such as this are rapidly changing the landscape of software development and deployment. As described by the CanvasPaint site: "[Canvas is] a near pixel-perfect copy of Microsoft Paint in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, using the <canvas> tag as specified by WHATWG and supported by Safari 1.3, Firefox 1.5 and Opera 9."

Aside from an occasional gang squirt, Moses Lake, Washington has no graffiti art scene of which to speak. Yes, there are many vast, open walls available for inspired artists to develop into colorful statements of creative expression. However, city officials and general public opinion frown on graffiti art as worthless, wicked vandalism. Granted, the city does offer several commissioned murals, mainly scenic visions of the ordinary rural variety. Unfortunately, those of us craving authentic expressions of genuine creativity must travel elsewhere to enjoy such diverse cultural fruit.

Imported graffiti art, picked fresh daily Or so we thought. Recently we discovered a daily supply of local, fresh graffiti. A short drive out Moses Lake's Wheeler Road reveals a west-coast freight-car loading station. And, as any connoisseur of aerosol art is aware, graffiti artists love to paint on freight cars. Sure enough, a quick drive into the loading area manifests a colorful line of beautifully decorated railcars. To see such dynamic and intense expressions of deliberation and purpose is like opening the window of youth and shooting up a truckload of rainbows. “..an unexpected pleasure — we are honored by your presence..”

Better still, the railcars are there on business, meaning they are constantly showing up, getting loaded, and taking off, thereby making room for the next set of traveling canvases. Every day, there is a fresh selection of imported west-coast graffiti art ripe for the pickinz. And pick I do — at least three times a week, every week, I drive out to the station early in the morning to examine, admire, and capture the daily gallery. For several weeks now, my collection of high-resolution digital photographs of west-coast graffiti has been growing.

Soon, the collection will be available at perishable.biz, which will feature artwork, digital photos, video chunks, audio turdz, and now, imported graffiti art. Why two Perishable websites? While perishablepress.com focuses on written material, code, and other text, perishable.biz presents creativity as expressed via aural, visual, and digital media. "You gotta keep 'em separated."

Indeed, this segregation of Perishable content enables us to consolidate an online resource (perishablepress.com) for news and information concerning everything associated with all of our creative endeavors. Further, an informational repository such as perishablepress.com enables us to focus entirely on artistic and other creative content at our other sites, such as perishable.biz, deadletterart.com, and artspacemagazine.com.