I keep my iPhone slow with all the street art shots I forever shoot and store with it. Where will these photos go, this endless documentation of my surrounds? Sure, every once in awhile they’ll pour out into a best-of compilation for the paper, but most of the time they’re just there, staring me in the face, daring me to trap my friends into a mandatory slideshow session. “Dude, you gotta check this one out! It’s… oh, um, it’s like in that one alley behind that fancy hat factory?”
But I guess 1AM Gallery was having a similar problem, because now there’s an app for that.
The new, free 1AM mobile app was announced today by the street art-centric SoMa art space that has recently hosted group shows of aerosol artists focused on Legos and videogames and often offers graffiti technique classes and tours by Bay graff legend Nate.
The app is a sharing program for wall fiends. Upload photos of your favorite street art — they’ll be automatically geo-tagged, date-tagged by when you took the photo, and will await your astute commentary below (prediction: half the time this field will read “clean”). There’s an easy option to share the pics via Facebook or Twitter, and you can search other’s users photos by geographic closeness, and by recently uploaded photos — though this last filter will like as not turn you onto what’s being painted in Norway (rad!)
The one addition I would have liked to see was a function to tag photos with artist names so you could search to see if, say, Rye Purvis had any new works. I guess leaving it anonymous works better for the illegal art-makers though, so eff you police let’s keep it anonymous.
UPDATE: 1AM founder Daniel Pan clarifies: “we are able to search by artist name through a hashtag system in comments like Instagram. If you are looking for a certain topic, or artist, or city that has been hashtagged, you can click on the magnifying glass in the top left corner of the view screen (bottom left tab). “
As of right it doesn’t seem to have a ton of users on it, but that should change by the time the release party comes around next month. Check out that event for free graffiti tours conducted by Nate1, DJs Mr Murdock and Don Kainoa, and 1AM phone cover giveaways.
1AM Gallery app release party
May 9, 6-9pm, free
1AM Gallery
1000 Howard, SF