PROJECT FILE: ARTWORK IN 140 CHARACTERS OR LESS

Micro-blogging site Twitter, which restricts users to very short posts (called ‘tweets’) to encourage frequent, on-the-go updates, has been in the news for its role in enabling discussion and reporting about the Chinese earthquake. Today, the Guardian blogs about how people affected by the quake are posting memorial tweets online.

On Friday, Rhizome ran a piece by Ed Halter rounding up recent artists’ works that make use of the Twitter platform, such as a blog run by user jennyholzer. Ed’s post features a new piece by artist Guthrie Lonergan, who uses ‘telegraph-style tweets’ to describe photographs that are posted to another blog, VVORK, which features a constant stream of images of contemporary artworks.

Guthrie’s piece hits my curatorial funny bone because these descriptions do complete and total injustice to the original works. In a larger sense, though, the work explores the formal constraints and aesthetics of the tweet. Ed uses the word haiku to describe it, which I think is apropos: ‘fluorescent lights behind spy mirror wax and wane’, ‘polluting rivers for art, 3: green dye in Gran Canal, Venice.’

»Coloration du Grand Canal, Venice«, 1968 by Nicolás García Uriburu.

An earlier work by Lonergan is showing in The New Normal. That piece, MySpace Intro Videos, also explores the emerging aesthetics of web 2.0 platforms. In this case, it looks at videos made by young people as a way of introducing themselves to the world via their social networking home pages. By taking these videos out of their original context, Lonergan once again highlights their specific formal conventions, and the absurdity found therein.

Guthrie’s piece: twitter.com/vvork

Original Rhizome article: Tweaking Tweets

UPDATE: Guthrie wrote to say that Tom Moody has been updating the Twitter piece for the last two months or so.