Monday, February 05, 2007

Signifiers



Many Tags contain a character that I have called a "Signifier" which is added as a decoration to the Tag. These include Halos, Asterisks, Arrows, TriDots and Quotation marks to name those that I have recognised so far. What I don't know is what they signify - a group of taggers sharing the same character as a sign of membership in a crew - or are they purely decorative? Comments?

4 comments:

YAM said...

I don't think any of the signifiers are meant to be "decorative". I believe taggers produce every stroke for a specific meaning. Not to say I have any of it figured out, in fact I practically stand on my head trying to "get it" without a whole lot of success. The tags are quite fascinating really. I also don't think VA has anything to do with vandalism -- I believe they feel if they aren't physically breaking something, but rather enhancing it, it's not an act of vandalism.

TagBagger said...

I agree YAM - I suspect the signifiers identify a connection between those Taggers who use the same signifiers, or some other symbolic connection

And I agree - I suspect that VA means Visual Assassins - a group of Taggers in some sort of association which is called a "Crew" - see the Post VA-Mystery Solved?

YAM said...

Absolutely. And I don't think the general population gives them enough "credit", for lack of a better word. For the most part, these expressions have much deeper meaning than simply spraying a name on a rock face, it is a language, a communication which I for one had no idea was so vast. Impressive really, and I don't find them offensive.

Anonymous said...

i think both