ENGL 668k: Digital Studies (Spring 2004)

Don't delete that SPAM just yet...

I came across this woman named Kristin Thomas who uses SPAM to create poetry. Here's her latest piece:

American Patriots,
How can we serve you better?

Win a laptop computer?
Win a trip to Florida?
Win a NEW LEXUS?
We give you more of what you want.

American Patriots,
How can we serve you better?
Want free movies?
Want to date a supermodel?
Want a bigger penis and stronger erections?
You will love it!

American Patriots,
How can we serve you better?
We have decided to increase your credit,
Increase your penis size, now
Give you free money.

Just Vote Bush. Your wife will never know.

Every line of each poem is from a piece of SPAM that she has received and I thought her technique dovetailed nicely with Manovich's discussion of the creation of "electronic art" as the result of industrialism. Although Manovich was referring to visual art that is assembled from ready made parts, I think Thomas's creations lend themselves to his theory. It's also worth looking at the distinctions between these poems and the poegrams that were blogged earlier in the month. From a reader's standpoint, I feel more comfortable defining the SPAM poety as art (and therefore recognizing its vaue) versus the poegrams. Thomas reminds me of the example Manovich gave about the DJ selecting and combining existing elements to create a new artistic form. We could simply say that the art is in the synthesis, yet I can't help but feel that when a human mind does the synthesizing versus a machine the output has more artistic value.

Here's the URL for the site:

http://www.sperare.com/spam_poetry/blogger.html

Posted by Christina at February 25, 2004 05:58 PM