Transmedial2013 workpage

Spam Publishing

Workshop description

For many of us our relation with spam emails consists in moving them from the inbox to the junk-mail folder of our email accounts. Yet, if we take a close look at some of the unsolicited emails we receive we might find them curious, and may even be amuse by them. We might even begin to see them as a literary creations, in which considerable amounts of inventiveness, and awareness to the current global situation, as well as possessing knowledge on society's anxieties. These elements are cleverly explored in spam emails in order to produce persuasive messages. Curious glitches also abound, such as the heavy use of stereotypes, Google-translate misinterpretations, typos, word obfuscations, and recurring text fragments. Being it such an idiosyncratic and rich area of text production I believe it deserves to be embraced as a literary genre. Being it so, I am interested in exploring it as a literary device, as a template for writing and communication.

Consent to Print

(Eleanor & Dave) As digital content is increasingly atomized and paper assumes the role of curated 'best of', how do we decide what qualifies for printing? Voting systems and individual curation are the usual answers, but could there be more interesting and self-reflexive methods? A workshop to prototype experimental, democratic methods of filtering online content and using them to create custom print publications.

note from eleanor: Theoretical input from me will come from my research on Consensus decision-making, and the critiques that can be made of it by feminist theories of consent.