User:Andre Castro/2/TM-Spam-bestiary

Intro

Spam is a peculiar kind of literature. A literature that is not intended to be art, existing with the sole purpose of extorting money from others or collecting informations about them. As any kind of literature, spam has its own inner rules, recurrent characters and dynamics. Those elements give deep insights into our contemporary algorithmic culture. Performing a print remediation, the embedded characteristic of spam become highlighted.

Objective

Create a portrait of a character drawing from the spam archive; it doesn't necessarily need to be the sender! It could be a word, an amount of money, a date, etc. You can work both textually and image-wise, juxtaposing materials taken from the internet, reinterpreting the characters in a personal way and reflecting on the structure, the context and poetics of spam messages.

Rules

0. Split in groups of two; 1. Choose one (or more) spam email(s) from the archive (http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/django/acastro/collect_spam/spam/) or from your own spam folder; 2. Analyse the many elements that define the poetics of spam: sender, object, inner text, source code, attachments, browser interface, etc; 3. Work on the pdf template: this is basically composed of two pages 14.817cm x 20.99cm. You can use the digital or analog technique you prefer to fill those pages: paint, collage, calligraphy, photography, screenshot, frottage, etc. Just take into account that the final booklet will be printed in b/w; 4. Send your pdf to silviolorusso@gmail.com with object "RE:monosodium glutamate"

Conclusions

All pdfs will be merged together and the resulting booklet will represent a sort of “bestiary of spam characters”. The booklet will be available in print on demand on Lulu.com. Anyone will be able to purchase it for an extremely cheap price.