:-) good stash of vallium and amphetamines though, so the rumours go.

as an aside, i introduced a few people to Exit Through the Gift Shop last night and they are converts to the religion of Banksy.  What a cracking movie, especially when they're exploring his studio...

Good shout eschiff, must get mine (Exit......) out tonight for another 'butchers'. What was the other question?

The master butcher of leigh on sea?

6'9'' fists of steel.

I think we've all been there Wiz...

lol

Article published online an hour ago about a geographical profiling study on banksy and the intervention of banksys lawyers:

www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35645371

"..analyse the spatial patterns of Banksy artworks in Bristol and London. The model takes as input the locations of these artworks, and calculates the probability of ‘offender’ residence across the study area."

So we're looking for someone that has ties to London and Bristol. This revelation makes that gravitational wave discovery look like ripples in a pond.

... until some little rascal graff's the school wall with a CND symbol

I enjoyed reading this.
Would love to see pictures of your and your nephew's efforts.

I have just read the journal article. It comes across as rather gimmicky, and the foundation of the results it arrives at seems a bit weak.

For example, the authors "expect 95 percent of artworks to lie within approximately two kilometers of a source (e.g., a home)". In other words, the assumption is made that Banksy would typically not travel further than 2 kilometers from his home to put up an artwork. The authors base this on a specific analytical component - a sigma value - which is "a typical value for ‘criminal’ movement in urban environments".

The use of this particular sigma value should mean that the authors - for analytical, not necessarily moral, purposes - designate Banksy's activities as "criminal".

However, at the end of the article they write: "While some see Banksy’s street art as illegal graffiti, there is often an element of political protest in his subversive epigrams. His spatial patterns are therefore similar to those of others who post political messages in public places."

The statement that the spatial patterns are similar to that of others who post political messages in public places could potentially mean that the sigma value used to determine the expected distance from an artwork to a "source" would be affected, unless the sigma value for "criminal activity" and "political protest activity" happens to be exactly the same. This issue is not addressed in the article.

This is just one problem with the article, and potentially the study, that jumped out at me when I first read it.

Another is the very last paragraph of the article, which reads: "Ethical note: the authors are aware of, and respectful of, the privacy of Mr. Gunningham and his relatives and have thus only used data in the public domain. We have deliberately omitted precise addresses."

This comes across as disingenuous and/or uninformed. I would suggest that, from an ethical point of view, the authors should have stuck to their original idea and kept the "suspect" anonymous. I would further suggest that they chose not to do this because they were aware of the media attention their work could potentially attract if they included the name.

There's already a thread regarding this.

urbanartassociation.com/thread/137029/bbc-article-on-banksy

Good old Robbie! I can't believe it!!!