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, the 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 s ;

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 of two pages 14.817cm x 20.99cm each?) . 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 finished [or completed?] pdf to silviolorusso@gmail.com with the subject: "RE: monosodium glutamate".

Conclusion

All pdfs will be merged together and compiled into a booklet - a “ B estiary of S pam C haracters”[use capitals if that is your title]. The booklet will be made available through print on demand via Lulu.com, and will also be sent to you and your fellow [keeps the address to the reader direct as above] participants as a pdf.