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Bollocks! I've been gazumped...

11 January, 08:51 pm

Well, not quite gazumped, although buying our new flat is taking forever. But I was checking my RSS feeds this evening and found this article on the CR blog. Now I’ve been sitting on a half written article about these span images and how good they look for several weeks, wallowing in how original my idea was, and procrastinating. Then this!.. serves me right and also saves me from having to think of anything original to say…

To the right is my collection of spam images, and don’t they look great? This is real un-design. Each image is randomly generated to evade spam blockers, so each is unique. On the internet this is surely worth something in itself.—the idea of uniqueness is more usually associated with the hand-made, not unwanted junk mail produced by their millions; individuality serving only to irritate.

Another thing the spammers have on their side is innovation. Necessity being the mother of invention, spammers have to innovate to stay one step ahead of those pesky security experts. Look at some of the techniques they are using to fool any machine that might be reading them. The images are often split into thin strips that are then revealed one at a time to build up the image, or divided into two frames that are alternated at a high frame rate to appear, to a human, as a single image. I especially like the use of subliminal messages (does that even work?).

So these images are pretty, unique and innovative. What’s not to like about them?

Part Two: Spam vs Art.

Tomma Abts won the 2006 Turner Prize:

She uses no source material and begins with no preconceived idea of the final result. Instead, her paintings take shape through a gradual process of layering and accrual. As the internal logic of each composition unfolds forms are defined, buried and rediscovered until the painting becomes ‘congruent with itself’.

So her paintings to are basically random. During this random process, Abts’ “style” can be seen to as equivalent to the algorithms that rule the creation of the spam images. It’s therefore no surprise to see that there are significant similarities between the spam images and Abt’s work. A quick search on Google confirms this, many of her images end up being made out of angular geometric patterns and circles. Remove the text from the spam images, render them in oil paint and colours that go well with expensive furniture and, really, what’s the difference?

I’m not sure what this is showing: the inanity of abstract painting or the emerging importance of spam aesthetics. Either way, wouldn’t it be great if spammers would collaborate with artists or designers and deliver something beautiful into our daily inboxes?

But, then again, maybe it would be a shame to loose the rawness and innocence of something where form really does follow function. Lets appreciate spam!

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