Scientists from the Queen Mary University of London may have finally uncovered the identity of elusive English-based street artist Banksy using an unlikely method: mathematics. The team applied a type of modeling technique called geographic profiling that is also used to track down criminals and map disease outbreaks. Police forces use it to narrow down lists of suspects by using calculations that take into account the crime sites and predict where the offender is most likely to live.
Using the locations of 140 Banksy artworks in London and Bristol, the team says that they discovered that they "are associated with sites linked to one prominent candidate, before naming Robin Gunningham, who has previously been linked to Banksy in media reports.
Although the study is not conclusive, the team found a bar, playing fields and a residential address in Bristol, as well as three London addresses, pointing to Gunningham, lending further support to the belief of many that Gunningham is Banksy.
Adding to the suspicions, Banksy's lawyers delayed the release of the study due to the team's promotional tactics, claiming that the wording of the now-withdrawn press release was concerning.
"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," said Steven Le Comber, a mathematical biologist and lead author of the study.
Banksy's pieces, which have sold for up to $1.8 million at auction, are known for satirical stencils and first appeared on the walls of Bristol before expanding into areas around London and all over the world.
Le Comber says that this research can be used not only to hone in on criminals but also to track epidemics.
"We found that if we used the addresses of people with malaria we could find the mosquitoes that were spreading the disease very easily," he said, speaking of the malaria outbreak in Cairo.
The geographic profiling method could also be beneficial when hunting down terrorists in order to capture them before they commit an attack.
"Some terrorists will engage in graffiti, banner-posting and leafletting to establish their credibility," Le Comber said. "You could potentially use the spatial pattern of leafletting to identify the location of terror cells."
The findings were published in the Mar. 3 issue of the Journal of Spatial Science.
