I kind of love it when old and new technology meet. I love it when things that were born online go offline and stop making sense, or make different sense. Especially when it’s for no good reason other than maybe art. So I loved the Dawson Print Shop’s #nighttwitters piece at the Nocturne: Art at Night festival this year: printing press meets Twitter. People sent in their less than 140 character night stories over using the hashtag, they selected the best ten, and made letter-press posters to give away. They’re really nicely done:
Confession: I considered submitting a story, but when I opened up Tweetdeck my mind went blank. #regrets
Another piece I liked was part of a NSCAD student art exhibit: a fax machine spitting out hand-written facebook status updates in the middle of the room. They landed on the floor and just kept piling up. We were there at the beginning of the night: I wonder what it looked like by the end.
Confession #2: Fax machines confuse me and make me anxious. I’ve worked in several offices, and I’ve had to fax things now and then. I never trust that they make it through. I never trust that I put the paper in the right way and haven’t faxed a series of blank pages. It reminds me of how people my parent’s age felt about email when it first became popular. But I never question that my email went through. Of course it did. It just does.
