Craig Castleman, assistant professor of communication at the Bernard M. Baruch College in Manhattan, noted that, in the late sixties, a small group of young New Yorkers began to "make do" (getting up), that is, to write repeatedly their names on the cars and subway stations in New York.

The phenomenon was expanding rapidly, and since then, what began as a shy, tentative target of a handful of teenagers, has become a movement that brings together thousands of artists from around the world.