EKG Records Pulse of the City Streets

Pounding pavement on the Lower East Side, you’ll no doubt spot them everywhere. Doorways, subway stations, windows, plywood…pretty much every piece of street furniture out there. We first started spotting the EKG chalk/paint markings (not “infinity” as some have speculated) at various neighborhood locations last year.

Simple. Awesome. Channeling the heartbeat of the city. As if taking a reading on the health of select buildings around town. The true identity of the street artist is unknown, but she goes by, you guessed it, EKG. We reached out through the official Flickr page to learn more about the inspiration behind the graffiti:

EKG is an acronym for electrocardiogram, which is an electronic visual representation of a heartbeat. As a symbol strung together throughout the circuits of the city, (infinite in suggestion by its continuous horizontal transmission line and its recursive omnipresence throughout the city, aka “going All-City”), the pulse represents an expression of human aspiration, an individual expressing herself on and within the matrix, the cool grid of urbanography.

Someone feels strongly enough to make a personal statement utilizing unsanctioned aesthetic manifestations, inherently anti-status quo marks. Individuals are the heart of any city. As a larger metaphor, or meta-tag, it represents the pulse of the city, the body politic. Click these DNA-HTML hyperlinks and messages will pop up: communications, personalities, philosophies, political ideologies, and so on. En masse, Graffiti and Street Art (Urban Art) are an expression of the populace of a city, their voice, their visual protest.

And in case you were wondering, EKG predominantly uses oil-based paint sticks.