A trio of Vancouverites are hoping to turn the city’s alleyways into art galleries and make street art accessible to masses thanks to a new mobile app they’ve developed. Torin Kline, Sam Wempe, and Gary Yarbrough each met at UBC as students and share a common love of art. The trio has spent the past year and a half combining their efforts to create the Curb app, which allows users to find nearby examples of street art on their mobile device.
While works of street art exist all over the city, many are tucked in alleys, under bridges, and hidden away so they won’t be painted over or covered up, making them hard to find.
The Curb app solves that by mapping out nearby public murals, paintings and graffiti, and even includes artist information, turning a stroll through downtown into an art gallery crawl.
“These are masterpieces,” says Kline. “The Picassos of our generation are all in street art. But a lot of artists have a hard time making a name for themselves… And we see [Curb] as a universal platform for [them].
“Not everyone is a Banksy. Not everyone has that marketing push behind them.”
The app’s content is crowdsourced from users and the artists themselves. Users can snap a photo of a particular piece of street art, and Curb uses the GPS data to plot the artwork on a map. The app also features a newsfeed with the latest art that has been uploaded.
The line between vandalism and art can be vague, however, and not everyone shares Kilne’s opinion of street art. While some may see it as a way to beautify the cold concrete confines of the city, others consider it a defacement of property.
Since Curb users can share and like their favourite works of street art, it gives legitimate pieces more visibility, while filtering out the garbage.
“Terrible art, terrible tags will fall down the list and not get noticed,” says Kline. Users can also flag a piece if it’s inappropriate. While Kline recognizes art, especially street art, is often intended to provoke, he says Curb draws the line at anything gratuitously offensive, such as blatant racism.
The app is basically a prototype right now, but Kline and his team hope to add more features – including augmented reality – and would love to expand the reach of Curb to cities around the world.
To take Curb to the next level Kline and Co. are hoping to raise money through a crowdsourcing campaign in the coming months.
“This is a passion project for us,” says Kline. “We all have full-time jobs.”
Curb has already commissioned one mural by Steve “The Creative Individual” Hornung in the West End to help promote the launch the app last month, and Kline says they hope partner with local community groups to do more murals in the future.
