O spam traspasou a barreira dos filtros dos nosos correos electrónicos converténdose en materia prima de traballos creativos. Cada un deses emails automáticos lanzados por robots convértense no impulso, nun microtraballador anónimo e invisible que pon en funcionamento un gráfico ou unha instalación remota. A súa eficacia expansiva e inmersiva na nosa vida privada converteu ao spam, ao e-mail como o seu rostro máis benigno, nunha fonte de enerxía que diversos creadores reciclan como combustible para obras de diverso formato, tales como a experimentación nos modos de visualización, o spam convertido en protagonista de instalacións e como ingrediente esencial de pezas de net art.

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Visualization

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Spam plants by Alex Dragulescu

The ASCII values found in the text of spam messages determine the attributes and qualities of the Spam Plants.

The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures. Spam Plants. Through the ASCII values found in the text of mails he creates spam plants.

Url: http://www.sq.ro/spamplants.php

Themail: visualize your email conversations.

Themail is a visualization that portrays relationships using the interaction histories preserved in email archives. Using the content of exchanged messages, it shows the words that characterize one’s correspondence with an individual and how they change over the period of the relationship.

Url: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/ fviegas/projects/themail/study/index.htm

Spamgraffiti by David Chein. 2004.

Spamgraffiti is a series of online installations created from spam.

Each environment is created by spooling through one email account and visually articulating the spam on a series of layers. Newer spam appears above and slowly filters out older spam below. As the rate of spam increases over time per account, the page itself appears less and less like the previous generation.

Url: http://www.spamgraffiti.com/spamgraffiti/

Spam Abstractions by JK Keller.

Compositions created from 100 spam e-mail images. Text was deleted from the gifs to reveal the random abstract patterns used to fool spam filters.

Url: http://www.c71123.com/spam-abstractions/

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Installation/Sculpture.

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Email erosion (2006) by Ethan Ham and Tony Muilenburg.

Email Erosion automatically creates sculptures out of biodegradable, starch based foam using spam and email as stimuli. Based on an email, the Eroder may elect to rotate the foam, raise or lower the Sprayer, or erode the foam with a spray of water.

Url: http://www.emailerosion.org/erosion.html

Spamtrap by Bill Shackelford

Spamtrap is an interactive installation piece that prints, shreds and blacklists spam email. It interacts with spammers by monitoring several email addresses I created specifically to lure in spam and an old unused personal email address I use to lure in spam. I do not use these email addresses for any other communication. I post these individual email addresses on websites and online bulletin boards that cause them to be harvested by spambots and then to start receiving spam.

Url: http://billshackelford.com/home.php5?page=/portfolio_spamtra_826

Nowhere.com by Nick Philip

Artist Nick Philip directs you to a row of garbage cans placed below twelve whirring fax machines at Tokyo’s Intercommunications Center. The domain nowhere.com, he explains, is often used as a return address by shady Internet spammers to disguise their actual Internet location. Irritated recipients reply to the spam but because of the false return address the replies are returned to nowhere.com instead of back to the spammers. That is, until Philip directed all email addressed to nowhere.com to a series of fax machines at the ICC. Now the piles of lost missives are redirected into a physical representation of their final digital destination - the trash can.

This description is based on an article by David Pescovitz on the CaliforniaCulture.Net Web site

Url: http://nphilip.best.vwh.net/instal.htm

Email Clock by Tom Igoe

“Like many people, I have a lot of anxiety about my email inbox. With every kilobyte that comes in, another minute of my life disappears, time I could spend doing things I enjoy more than checking email. But I can’t stop checking my email compulsively while I’m working, and email programs make it even easier to feed my compulsion. So I decided to embody my anxiety in a device that would compulsively check my email for me, and worry over the amount continually coming in, so I wouldn’t have to.”

Url: http://www.tigoe.net/emailclock/mailclock1.shtml

SP4M. D0 Y OU SWA1LOW? by Ayah Bdei

SP4M. D0 Y OU SWA1LOW? attempts to turn the relationship we have with spam around. A microcontroller-based Webserver retrieves spam sent over the Internet in real time, and remotely feeds a continuous shuffled stream of it to public displays. Spam is no longer meaningless, time-consuming junk, but rather a diagnosis of cultural values and an alternate representation of societies.

Url: http://web.media.mit.edu/ ayah/spam.html

Mailia by mi_ga

Mailia analyzes emails coming to ones mailbox and simply replies to them. Forget automated standard ’Out of Office’ replies, Mailia is as intelligent as software like Eliza and as flexible as open source products. The email answering machine works in the following way: it grabs an incoming message, analyzes it, sends requests to the Google search engine, then picks up given results, sorts them, and outputs the information into an email form which is sent back to the sender.

Url: http://triple-double-u.com/mailia/

Webmail service using live snails.

Our snails are equipped with a miniaturised electronic circuit and antenna, enabling them to be assigned messages. Your message is collected from a despatch centre at one end of their enclosure. Once associated with the tiny electronic chip on the snail’s shell your message will be carried around until the snail chances by the drop off point. Here more hardware collects your message and forwards it to its final destination.

Url: http://www.boredomresearch.net/rsm/index.html