email erosion

11 August 2005

emailerosion.jpgan art installation that automatically creates physical data sculptures, using spam & e-mail as data to trigger the sculpting process. the installation contains robot—like mechanisms that function like a flat-bed plotter, squirting water to dissolve sections of a large block of biodegradable (starch-based) styrofoam. each of the bots is associated with an email address, which triggers to either move or squirt water, depending on an algorithm that uses the email’s content as input data. reminds me of pulsart. [ethanham.com]

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ambient & physical . comments (2)

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comments

Beautiful and interesting. I enjoy the evolution of this art piece and wonder how I can get one for my home or make my own!

phishJam . 18 August 2005

It's a little depressing, really: The very structure and concept of this sculpture (and of pulsart for that matter) fates the Art to oblivion under the onslaught of the information ... and yet the information will continue, long after the sculpture is exhausted and inert.

That's sad, and kinda gloomy as a prognosis, isn't it?

on a more positive information transformation strategy, Spambox[1] has devised means to accommodate the incoming information regardless of the flux rate, utilizing every last bit of each day's accumulated spam to train statistical phrase correlations used (distilled?) to generate a weekly three-minute ambient MIDI tune. Rather than being worn down to nothing, Spambox triumphs over the noise, ready for more.

I'm a little surprised there isn't more spam-fueled art; we make craftwork out of every other form of trash, yet it's curious (and probably telling) that with spam, even artists tend to ignore it in hopes it will go away, or paint disconsolate apocalyptic visions like Email Erosion ;)

[1]http://spamtoday.blogspot.com

mrG . 20 August 2005

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