Twitter

Post image for A Transcendental Look at Humanity Through Social Media

Go to vinepeek.com. Spend five minutes watching it without tearing up, feeling overwhelmed by humanity’s vastness, and becoming totally addicted. I dare you.

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Post image for Vine Is the Latest, Greatest Form of Web Kitsch

By now you may have heard of Vine. If you’re on Twitter at all, you’ve definitely heard of and/or seen it. You may not have actually used Vine, but you probably will soon — it’s the newest multimedia format to hit social networks, a more complicated version of a GIF or a simplified version of a home movie.

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Post image for People Who Aren’t Upset That a Rothko Was Defaced Today

The reaction in 140 characters or less after today’s Rothko incident at the Tate Modern has been overwhelming … including some people who seemed to enjoy the news.

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Post image for The Potential for Journalism in the Expanded Field

BERKELEY, California — As more of us can afford the tools historically only available to publishing houses, we have increasingly adopted them to share our stories and thoughts online. The invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s cheapened and quickened the arduous process of writing texts by hand. The cheaper the publishing, the cheaper the books, making information more accessible and creating an economic environment where more people could become publishers, creating an increasingly diverse, cheap, and accessible flow of information to an increasingly wider audience. Before the printing press books were rare and expensive, few possessed them and few could read them. The internet has expanded what the printing press started at an unprecedented degree.

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Post image for The Best & Worst Tweets About Today’s Pussy Riot Verdict

The Twitterverse is full of opinions and here is just some of the most notable 140 characters or less commentary that appeared on our screens.

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Essays

Twitter as Art

by Ben Valentine on July 13, 2012

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After thinking through the idea of Tumblr as art, I began to find the difference between various social media platforms glaringly obvious. Marshall McCluhan’s phrase “the medium is the message” came to mind. How do settings and mediums change or possibly mandate artistic intention? After exploring Tumblr’s unique qualities, I wanted to expand the focus to another relatively new platform for artistic creation, Twitter.

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Post image for Robotization of the Internet

I recently stumbled across a video of writer Jon Ronson confronting a Twitter bot that was “stealing” Ronson’s personality. The surreal (or is it hyperreal?) video and the subsequent article written by two of those interviewed in the video, Dan O’Hara and Luke Robert Mason, is a fascinating glimpse into the robotization of the internet today.

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Reactor

Twittering Machine 2.0

by Ben Valentine on June 22, 2012

Post image for Twittering Machine 2.0

Angelo Plessas is a net artist whose works predominately deal with color, interactivity and sound. “Re-Twittering Machine” (2012) caught my attention because of the ever growing hype around social media’s role in social unrest like the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement.

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Post image for Twitter Transforms Its Logo Into Sleeker, Balder Birdie

Today the micro-blogging service has unveiled its sleeker and more feather-less — not to mention slightly darker — blue logo.

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Post image for Visualizing and Auralizing the Rhythms of Twitter

LOS ANGELES — What on earth is Twitter talking about? It’s easy to find out: check your stream, scan some words and ta-da, you know what your friends are saying and doing.

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