What Street Art is an urban art appreciation project conceptualized and developed by an interdisciplinary and international collective of students. The app aims to provide creators with a digital platform to showcase their work and users with location-specific, artificial intelligence-based data about murals and graffiti in their city.
This initiative is the result of TechLab Berlin’s Local Digital Shaper Program and incorporates the combined efforts of all four of the program’s education tracks: User Experience Design, Web Development, Artificial Intelligence and Data Science.
The iOS-based application is designed to entice the user into the streets to explore murals and graffiti. Upon launching the app, the user can navigate through collections of artworks sorted by popularity, proximity, and the latest uploads. It contains an AI-based scanning option that enables the user to scan murals and find the artwork’s title, creator’s name, and background information via their device’s camera. Additionally, the app will recommend works with similar aesthetics based on the AI’s analysis of each scan.
Another highlight is the ‘Map’ function, where the hunt for street art is facilitated by a geolocation-based map populated by markers pinpointing various urban artwork sites. This feature allows the user to navigate to the closest mural or place of interest, or alternatively, scroll and swipe through listed artworks in nearby neighbourhoods. Through the ‘Explore’ tab, What Street Art invites adventurous users to discover a list of randomly selected artworks and stumble upon new artists.
Our app endeavours to soothe the wants and needs of urban art fans, hunters, and creators alike. The ability to ‘like’ and ‘save’ artworks in personalized galleries is our attempt to allow users to curate their very own street art collection. Our app does not require an account unless the user would like to archive their muralgems for future viewing.