Wetenschappers van de Queen Mary University of London hebben een geografische profiel samengesteld welke schijnbaar de ware identiteit van Banksy onthuld. De bekende, maar tot op heden anonieme, straatartiest verwierf wereldwijde faam dankzij z’n kritische kunstwerken op muren en straathoeken. De bevindingen hebben het kamp van Banksy al bereikt en naar verluidt is hij angstig voor de gevolgen. Het advocaten-team van Banksy is nu aan het uitzoeken of de resultaten tegengehouden kunnen worden.
Het onderzoek, welke is gepubliceerd in Taylor & Francis en kan hieronder gelezen worden:
“We use a Dirichlet process mixture (DPM) model of geographic profiling, a mathematical technique developed in criminology and finding increasing application within ecology and epidemiology, to 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. Our analysis highlights areas associated with one prominent candidate (e.g., his home), supporting his identification as Banksy.”
Their findings point to one suspect, Robin Gunningham, a man who has been named as Banksy in previous journalistic investigations. Addresses connected to Gunningham, found using publicly available information, scored highly on a geoprofile of both London and Bristol created using a list of Banksy’s artwork.
Steve Le Comber, co-author of the study, told the BBC: “What I thought I would do is pull out the 10 most likely suspects, evaluate all of them and not name any. But it rapidly became apparent that there is only one serious suspect, and everyone knows who it is.”
Le Comber voegt toe dat hij niet denkt dat hij en z’n collega’s Banksy ontmaskerd hebben, maar zegt: “I’d be surprised if it’s not [Gunningham], even without our analysis, but it’s interesting that the analysis offers additional support for it.”
Tags: Banksy, Vrije tijd