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This essay examines the ways revolutionary desire was articulated and interpreted through graffiti in Cairo, Egypt during the Arab Spring and its immediate aftermath. For writers in Cairo, graffiti was one of many in a constellation of resistances that undermined everyday life in Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt and the SCAF-controlled interim government. Ordinary surfaces of the city were illegally marked, displaying revolutionary potentiality by allowing the seemingly powerless rhetorical openings of engagement. Far from being a monolithic discourse, graffiti created geographies of material protest that were locally enacted but globally contextualized. Political graffiti, like the overall protests of the Arab Spring, emerged in large numbers at particular moments, but its numerous roots spread distinctly into the past. First contextualizing Cairo graffiti as a tool for revolutionary protest, the article then examines specific writers (Mahmoud Graffiti, Ganzeer), particular ‘battleground' spaces (Tahrir Square, Mohamed Mahmoud Street), different graffiti mutations (tags, pieces, murals) and contrary aesthetic manipulations of the form (‘No Walls’ campaign, graffiti advertisements by multinational corporations) in order to assemble a graffiti scene in Cairo as it follows the ebbs and flows of revolutionary desire.

This editorial reviews the co-optation and commodification of modern graffiti and street art. In so doing, it analyses attempts by individuals and organizations to monetize the creation, production and dissemination of graffiti and street art. The commodification process often starts with attempts by graffiti and street artists to earn money through their work and then progresses to efforts primarily by cultural industries to integrate graffiti and street art into the products and services that they sell. This latter development can also include how selected property owners and real-estate developers invite artists to create works in or on their buildings or in particular neighbourhoods to make the areas more desirable. After the authors have established this context, they draw together the divergent themes from the four articles contained in this Special Issue.

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Abstract-The statistical properties of random rough surfaces are related to the basic radius of curvature condition for applying a physical optics scattering model. The relation between different surface slope regimes pad the use of approximate physical optics models are discussed. Included is how scattering from surfaces with other than small slope conditions restricts the use of such approximations.