Murmur Study from Christopher Baker on Vimeo.
This art installation called ‘Murmur Study’ created by Christopher Baker is currently showing at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis (now through August 23th, 2009). The small printers are driven by a program that picks up on Twitter ‘tweets’ and Facebook status updates that contain common human expressions like argh, meh, grrrr, oooo, ewww, and hmph. These micro-messages are then printed out, creating endless piles of documented human emotion. From what I can gather, the intent of this installation is to leave us with a deeper level of caution for the type of content we post publicly on a daily basis via our social channels. Personally, I’m struck most by the mass amounts of paper we must be saving by keeping our micro-emotions digital and I’m not all that worried or bothered by the idea that a large corporation may archive my “argh, I missed the bus” Facebook status. This installation is thought provoking from many angles. Nicely done.
Visit the project site -> christopherbaker.net/projects/murmur-study/
Murmur Study is an installation that examines the rise of micro-messaging technologies such as Twitter and Facebook’s status update. One might describe these messages as a kind of digital small talk. But unlike water-cooler conversations, these fleeting thoughts are accumulated, archived and digitally-indexed by corporations. While the future of these archives remains to be seen, the sheer volume of publicly accessible personal — often emotional — expression should give us pause.
This installation consists of 30 thermal printers that continuously monitor Twitter for new messages containing variations on common emotional utterances. Messages containing hundreds of variations on words such as argh, meh, grrrr, oooo, ewww, and hmph, are printed as an endless waterfall of text accumulating in tangled piles below.
[Related Project "Hello World!" vimeo.com/1553583]
Murmur study is a collaboration with Márton András Juhász nilseuropa.com and the Kitchen Budapest kibu.hu.
