The Final Outcome

After many sleepless nights!!

Binding

This is just a detail of the fantastic place where the book was bound. Here every book is bound manually by the very veryyy patient and helpfull 3 members of staff.

Silkscreening the cover

So...went to Lisbon to get all the printing and binding done! Here are some photos of the great silkscreen studio where I silkcreened the cover!

More layouts....

Monty Python love spam too

spam, spam, spam

Scriptographer Illustrations

Scriptographer is incredibly exciting to work with!
Following my research into computer generated graphics, and how this could relate to the spamming universe, as there is a viral nature to spam…(it expands and multiplies in an almost organic fashion) I started using Scriptographer to illustrate, throughout the pages of the book, the growing number of spam messages received daily on my E-mail account. Here is an example of what I have been working on.

Final Images?

These are some of the final images created to illustrate the spoems.
They are supposed to be a visual translation of the previously described cut-up technique, and were made by doing the following:

The attachments advertising various superfluous products and screenshots of the email messages themselves were gathered. Each image was then opened using TextEdit, which results in a massive amount of incomprehensible code, that was then remixed throught a series of cut and paste operations. The results are completely unpredictable and often quite beautiful, and keep the spirit of the cut-up technique fully intact and alive.

139 Spoems

Update! i have collected 540 spam e-mails in total so far, of which 139 are Spoems.
According to my schedule i have 3 weeks to collect more.
I have tried to attract as much spam as possible, here are some examples of how:

Subscribed to every newsletter i came across;
Signed up for amazing offers on-line;
Gave e-mail away in porn websites;
Signed up for paid surveys;
Joined Google Groups (Christian youth group, Gambling group, Adult Health group);
Posted my e-mail in on-line forums;

Spamoetry reading session!

Been trying to find something that could add to the book...
what does everyone think about a reading session?

Very initial layouts

Binding

Thought this binding technique could work well for the book..

Wizard of Oz meets Baudelaire

I decided to try to identify the sources for a couple of spoems. I was quite happy to find that it seems to be relatively easy to locate the sources, at least for substantial parts of the messages. One was composed of lines stolen from poems by Baudelaire, Victor Hugo and six other poets. Others included excerpts of 'The Wizard of Oz' and Aesop Fables, as well as a disproportionate amount of Louisa May Alcott bits. From different novels actually, which seems to indicate spammers really enjoy her work!

I find this weird mix of sources quite interesting...an analysis of these sources might produce intriguing results, even on a visual level, perhaps through some form of colour coding?

Paper Samples

So..ordered some Paper Samples from Artic Papers and got them today on the mail. I received their "Guide to Uncoated Paper" which allowed me to consider a variety of solutions for the book.

E-mail Layout

I found out how to access each full email message, including its headers. In the normally concealed headers one can find the senders IP address, which is composed by four sets of numbers separated by dots and serves to identify each computer connected to the internet. Basically, the IP address retrieved from the header of the email is the spammer’s digital identity.

Above is a full email…I’ve used it as a starting point for laying out of the spoems. The actual text is highlighted in pink, as are other bits of relevant information.

Cutting Up continues..

The images above are experiments with a visual cut-up techinique. Thought it would be appropriate to use the cut up technique that is used to create the spoems to create visuals to accompany them…these images are created by opening the file with a text editor – which allows you to see the image code – and then cutting up and remixing the said code, in a similar way to how Burroughs and others did with text. Have tried cutting up the images that are usually attached to spam emails, but the results havent been the most encouraging so far…it appears I need more interesting source imagery. In any case, this seems to have quite a lot of potential and I feel the computer graphics/pixelated nature of the images relates to the topic very well.

Computer Generated Graphics

Have been looking at computer generated art and how modules have been used to create visual textures. I think this relates to the spamming universe, as there is a viral nature to spam…it expands and multiplies in an almost organic fashion, which links to the idea of module. Have been thinking of possible variables related to spam messages that may be suitable parameters for creating modules and their evolution…the spammers IP could be interesting, as it is composed of a series of numbers.