Cities are full of art.
This is the map of those who notice.

What it is

Most street art has no label, no signature and no catalogue. It appears, it weathers, it gets painted over, and the only record is in the memory of the people who walked past. ArtDots is a shared map where those people write it down.

It is also a game. The map can hide what you have not found yet, so walking through a city becomes a treasure hunt with photos as clues. Every find counts on a leaderboard, and being the first to log a piece puts your name on it.

ArtDots is free, has no advertising trackers and does not track you; galleries can pay for a labelled Featured spot, nothing else is sold. It documents art that already exists; it does not ask anyone to make more. Finds are rewarded, painting is not.

How it works

1. Find a piece. Look at walls, poles, utility boxes, pavements, stairways, shutters. Eye level and below is where most people stop looking.
2. Log it with a photo and a location. Tap the button on the map. The location comes from the photo, from your phone or from a pasted map link.
3. New discoveries carry your name. If nobody has logged the piece before, it gets a serial number and you are its discoverer. If it is already on the map, your photo joins its gallery.
4. Hunt mode hides what you have not found. Turn it on and pieces you have not seen become fuzzy zones. Turn it off to explore everything the community has mapped.
5. Follow collections. Pieces group by artist and by city. Complete a set, follow an artist, or take on a whole neighbourhood.
6. Artists can claim their pieces. If a piece is yours, say so from your profile. From then on you decide how it appears.

You need an account to see the map and log finds, and for now accounts are by invite: ask someone who already hunts. Sign in with Apple, Google or a six-digit code sent to your e-mail. There is no password to remember.

How attribution works

Nobody approves anything and nothing waits for a moderator: what you log is on the map instantly. The community keeps it honest through three simple rules.

• Only people who found a piece can suggest who made it. No drive-by naming. A suggestion is shown as "probably" by that artist until the artist confirms it, and anyone who found the piece can contest it.
• Artists can claim their pieces. A claim overrides every suggestion. Claiming also unlocks a page with your pieces and a view of who is finding them.
• Artists decide how they appear. Some artists must stay unnamed. A claimed artist can choose to be anonymous (the name is never shown, anywhere), can hide the exact location of a piece, or can ask for a piece to be taken off the map, which happens promptly and without questions.

Anything contested goes to a small review queue handled by the person who runs the project. The rules in full are in the Terms of Use.

The first collections

Any city can be next. A collection starts the moment someone logs the first piece there.

Participate

• Log what you find. Every piece counts, including ones already on the map: more photos show how a piece ages and whether it is still there.
• Do not touch, remove or "restore" anything. The art belongs to the street and to everyone. Logging is looking, not collecting.
• Mind the surroundings. Much of this is on busy pavements and next to traffic. No photo is worth a scare, and no piece is worth trespassing.
• Frame it well. One photo per find: show the whole piece and a bit of its context, the pole, the corner, the doorway. It helps the next person find it.
• Are you an artist? Claim your pieces, or tell us if you would rather they were not on the map at all. Both are one message away.
• Want to seed your city? Write to mosaico@racelogplus.com. We would love to hear where you are.

Where we are

This is an early version, built by one person outside working hours, on free hosting tiers. It works, and it will have rough edges. Things will change as people use it, and your feedback shapes what comes next.

ArtDots is free and will stay free for the people who use it. To keep it that way, and to give it the time it deserves, funding is being sought from cultural bodies, grants and partners who care about public art. If you are one of those, or know one, get in touch.