That’s where Mural Locator comes in. This database of murals aims to pinpoint the massive, colorful pieces of art in all their glory. Murals are submitted by users of the site, who just need to add the location, a short description and a picture.

There are similar sites out there, notably the more Europe-centric streetartlocator.com – but none that focus on such a specific type of art.

Mashing up murals

As you’d expect, the murals listed on Mural Locator are shown on a Google Maps mashup. Although you can zoom in on areas that interest you, there’s no way to search the map, which might become a problem once the number of murals increases.

And that’s the thing – at the moment, of the 500 or so murals listed, over 300 are spread across just a few major US cities. There are fewer than 20 in Central and South America, about 60 in Europe, and just a few dotted across South Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Still, although numbers outside the US are low at present, there’s a pleasing diversity to the locations covered. For instance, there’s only a single African mural, but at least it’s there. And with every continent barring Antarctica covered, this could become a truly global resource for mural hunters.

Heaven for muralophiles?

Some of the benefits of this cool tool are immediately obvious. If you’re a mural enthusiast (A muralophile? A muralista?), you can look up murals in minutes. You could easily plan a walking tour of New York or San Francisco with the site.

In fact, Mural Locator is a site you should file in your bookmarks, right next to Graffiti Archaeology, another innovative tool which shows how graffiti has changed over time. After all, outdoor art is shaped by the weather. It can be blasted away or painted over at the whim of properly owners. And other street artists may make their own additions and changes.

More for the Mural Locator

There are lots of of exciting possibilities for Mural Locator. How about an augmented reality app for your iPhone which shows you how the mural in front of you has changed over time? A Google Street View tool to show you how a particular mural would look on the site of your own house?

Wherever the site’s creators decide to take it, the connection to the physical world around us should continue to make Mural Locator so interesting. It remains relevant, even when you’ve closed your browser and shut down your computer. So much so that even if you’re just a casual visitor to the site, you’ll soon be paying more attention to what’s around you.

Go on – why not head on over and upload the location of a mural in your home town or city?

The Let’s Color Campaign from Delux which is just now getting traction in the states, but has apparently been going on for a while, has Delux paints going to cities around the world, bringing as much paint as anyone could want, and commencing to “Colour” all types of public and private buildings.

This short documentary features footage of locals in Rio de Janeiro, London, Paris, Istambul, and Jodhpur India, going completely color crazy.
I was particularly interested in the time ramping technique they used in their timelaps. The letcolor youtube user gave clarification:

We used motion control to track very slowly at 0.5mm per second or slower. Some of the moves took 90 minutes in real time For the shot at the start we tamped the camera tps, iris and exposure time in sync to move from 25fps to 0.1fps – all in camera!

A while back I heard the architect James H Kunstler give an excellent speech arguing:

What we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about.

Here is Kunstler’s speech:

The idea is something that has been sticking with me for a while. In many cities in the US we haven’t taken the time to build them to connect with us on a human level as opposed to a utilitarian one. Thats one reason the Let’s Color connected with me. I will say that painting places with much color is something I’d like to do, and its something I will do at the next opportunity because places should be worth caring about.