If the traditional avant-garde suffered a fatal commoditization from the one-two-three punch of a taboo-free liberalized society, a cultural fetish for novelty, and advanced real-time marketing, then the neo-avant-garde thrives by simply flouting the law: specifically the victimless laws of defacement and theft: aka graffiti and copyright infringement.

The irony here is that the same radical advances in information technology that are rendering tagging an ever more problematic practice (due to the remote monitoring of private and public space) are simultaneously creating a golden age of infringement (due to the ready availability of technology for capturing, manipulating, and distributing digital information).

Expect these two neo-avant-garde practices to merge in the future, as taggers discover the virtual new worlds. And expect the most skilled and visionary practitioners to display legal virtuosity in skirting not flouting the law:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo