User:Andre Castro/2/TM-Spam-bestiary
Introduction
Spam is a peculiar kind of (para)literature. Although it is not intended to be art, it employs artistic strategies in order to succeed in extorting money or collecting information from its recipients. Like other genres of literature, spam possesses its own rules and recurring elements, such as narrative structure, characters and tone. These persistent elements give spam a distinct character and make it easily identifiable, but also serve as insights into our contemporary global culture. By performing a print remediation of spam, we hope to highlight some of its distinguishable aspects.
Objective
Create a portrait of a character drawing from the spam archive. The character doesn't necessarily need to be human, it can be a word, a sum of money, a date, etc. You can work with both text and imagery, juxtapose materials taken from the Web, reinterpret the character's profile, or reflect on the structure, context and poetics of spam messages.
Rules
0. Split into groups of two;
1. Together with your partner choose one (or more) spam email(s) from the spam archive ( http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/ django/acastro/collect_spam/ spam/) or from your own junk-mail folder;
2. Analyse the different elements of the spam emails (sender, subject, body, source code, attachments, browser interface, etc), looking for insights that will help you create your spam-character portrait;
3. Work on the pdf template (composed by two 14.817cm x 20.99cm pages). Digital and/or analog techniques can be used to fill the template: Paint, collage, calligraphy, photography, screenshots, frottage, etc. Just take into account that the final booklet will be printed in b/w;
4. Send your or completed pdf to silviolorusso@gmail.com with the subject: "RE: monosodium glutamate".
Conclusion
All pdfs will be merged together into a booklet - a “Bestiary of Spam Characters”. The booklet will be made available through print on demand via Lulu.com, and will also be sent to you and your fellow participants as a pdf.