NewZoid, launched on April 8, 2001, endlessly creates up-to-the-minute synthetic news headlines, resembling real ones but characterized by odd, absurd, shocking and amusing content.
NewZoid is a form of literary art, in which (for the first time, I believe) fairly coherent text is continually produced by automatically decomposing and randomly rearranging and adjusting source material that itself is always changing. To my knowledge, this is the most fully-developed work of its type. It is done by means of elegant proprietary software created solely for this purpose. If a new critical terminology is needed to describe what NewZoid does, I suggest Coherent Aleatory Recombination of Constantly Changing Text. This distinguishes NewZoid from the relatively large number of aleatory textual recombinations that either do not produce coherent results or, if they do, work with a fixed and extremely limited source of textual material.
Although my intention in creating this work will not ...
Full Description
NewZoid, launched on April 8, 2001, endlessly creates up-to-the-minute synthetic news headlines, resembling real ones but characterized by odd, absurd, shocking and amusing content.
NewZoid is a form of literary art, in which (for the first time, I believe) fairly coherent text is continually produced by automatically decomposing and randomly rearranging and adjusting source material that itself is always changing. To my knowledge, this is the most fully-developed work of its type. It is done by means of elegant proprietary software created solely for this purpose. If a new critical terminology is needed to describe what NewZoid does, I suggest Coherent Aleatory Recombination of Constantly Changing Text. This distinguishes NewZoid from the relatively large number of aleatory textual recombinations that either do not produce coherent results or, if they do, work with a fixed and extremely limited source of textual material.
Although my intention in creating this work will not necessarily control the way it is perceived by its audience, it was done primarily to mock and subvert the importance of media-reported news and information in the world and to encourage a more detached, philosophical (and, I believe, healthy) view of what constitutes reality.
In order to attract a wider audience, NewZoid has been given the form of a dot com entertainment site, with features allowing visitors to add their own headlines into the mix, to vote on favorite headlines for election to a permanent archive, to send sets of headlines to friends and to contact me.
As an additional attractant NewZoid has been given a cover story with echoes of the Prometheus myth - that it is the work of a fugitive scientist who has found a way to receive headlines from the parallel worlds theorized by quantum physics. NewZoid also engages in an extended, self-reflective and ambiguous play with the question of whether it is art or science.
In addition to its form as a web site, I would like to see NewZoid headlines in one other form- the streaming LCD headline news display sometimes seen on the exterior of buildings. I invite inquiries from institutions prescient enough to see how this would provide an endlessly intriguing art attraction and a therapeutic shock to the surrounding world.
I congratulate Rhizome for accepting NewZoid into its ArtBase. I await with interest the reaction of the audience, particularly the people and institutions who comprise the art world.
Work metadata
- Year Created: 2001
- Submitted to ArtBase: Saturday May 26th, 2001
- Original Url: http://www.newzoid.com/
- Permalink: http://www.newzoid.com/
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Work Credits:
- Daniel Young, creator
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