Twitter as an Artistic Medium

...Twitter feeds often appear in a public forum, for any stranger to stumble across and read. No one else shared the ambient moments I had with my grandmother, but some 1,000 people, a combination of strangers, acquaintances, and friends across Twitter and Facebook, hear about my insomnia, my bouts of sickness, my love of authentic California burritos. Why do we feel compelled to share this information with other people? How do we edit our tweets to create a carefully managed picture of ourselves? How does microblogging help us shape and record our experiences in memory?

Combining the traditional easy-to-use, easy-to-read nature of Twitter with my Morse code messages allowed me to explore some of those questions, and to start thinking about Twitter not simply as a social-networking site for artists, critics, and curators, but as an artistic medium in and of itself. Twitter, with its 140-character limit per message, presents an artificial constraint that encourages creativity. For my 1stfans project in particular, the addition of Morse code, where every alphanumeric character translates into multiple dots and dashes, reduced the content of the message dramatically. As a haiku poet, photographer, and digital media artist strongly influenced by Zen aesthetics and concepts, I have long appreciated the power of brevity.

via aboutharvest.com

As a community that previously had no voice in circles outside of their own, the farming industry is now capitalizing on the ability to share their stories, push their agenda and communicate with one another in real-time on Twitter. The AgChat Foundation was founded with that in mind and is educating the farming community on how to use tools like Twitter. The foundation's efforts are catching on, and they've even proposed a panel for SxSW 2011 to talk all about how the agriculture industry should be utilizing social media.

One interesting side affect to the growing number of farmers on Twitter is the fact that, according to Forbes, commodity traders are now able to better predict what will happen in the market because they get data and harvest information right from the horses mouth (that is not a pun) and are able to adjust their investments accordingly. What a fascinating movement.

Lastly, consumers are benefiting as well. Farmers are tweeting what fresh crop they have available for purchase, and farmer's markets are doing the same to let folks know what's available each week so locals know what to look forward to.

#fresh.

The open simplicity of Twitter is giving installation artists a new way to ask the public to interact with their work. The awesome non-profit Wasted Spaces aims to turn vacant buildings into canvases for cool art, and the Hello Wall is one we find interesting. It lets people Tweet a command to @thehellowall to change the shapes and movement of the graphics that are projected onto a public wall.

From @PSFK is a quote from the artists at Hellicar & Lewis:

"...The installation is designed to empower people, to allow them to have a creative input into the architectural space that they find themselves in – often without any sense of control or ownership."

There are some really cool things to be done with Twitter in the world of installation. Let us know if you see any around with an @mention to our @cleveraccounts.

Here’s how it works: I create a burger, call it “The Bits Burger” and broadcast it to Twitter or Facebook. Each time someone orders my special creation, I get 25 cents credit in the restaurant and my burger rises up the leaderboard. The more customers order my burger, the higher it goes and the more credits I get, until I’m eating free.

Anyone who creates a Twitter burger and gets on the top of the leaderboard let us know by @replying us on @cleveraccounts. You may be rewarded.

By Liz Szabo, USA TODAY

As she flew over the handlebars of her mountain bike, seconds before slamming into the ground, Leigh Fazzina remembers thinking to herself: "I'm going to break my neck. And there is no one out here to help me."

Fazzina, 36, had gotten lost in a 300-acre Connecticut wood while competing in a mini-triathlon last Tuesday. She says she was racing downhill, trying to locate the main biking trail and rejoin her race, when her front wheel hit some tree roots.

After a painful landing in the dirt, Fazzina — bloodied, panicking and unable to walk — knew she needed help.

But the amateur Philadelphia cyclist, who was in Connecticut to visit relatives, had no idea where she was. She tried screaming for help. But the other mountain bikers, including a cousin who entered the race with her, were too far away to hear.

Fazzina says she tried calling another cousin on her cellphone but couldn't connect. Desperate, Fazzina tried Twitter, the social networking site, on which more than 1,000 "followers" had signed up to receive her tweets.

"I've had a serious injury and NEED Help!" she typed. "Can someone please call Winding Trails in Farmington, CT tell them I'm stuck bike crash in woods."

At least half a dozen people, most who had never met her, picked up their phones.

Mary-Ellen Harper, director of fire and rescue services for the Farmington Fire Department, says her department got calls from California, New York and Chicago.

Within minutes of sending her tweet, Fazzina says she heard an ambulance siren.

In areas such as state parks, with spotty cellphone coverage, it's not unusual for people to be able to send instant messages or 140-character tweets when they can't make voice calls, says David Redl of CTIA-The Wireless Association, an industry group.

"If you are at the edge of a (wireless) network, you'll have fringe coverage enough to get a text message through," Redl says.

Though Twitter has more than 125 million users, it's still an unusual way to summon emergency help. Crime victims have texted to call for help, and families have used Twitter to reconnect after disasters. But officials at Twitter, the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians and the American College of Emergency Physicians all say they don't know of anyone using Twitter to call for an ambulance.

A week after the scare, Fazzina is back in Philadelphia; she says she is still sore and badly bruised but has no broken bones. And while her injuries weren't serious, she says, she's still glad she didn't have to spend a night in the woods. She plans to go mountain biking again once she heals — but only on a path that she knows well. And only with her cellphone.

hat tip: @ed