I still haven’t quite figured out what to do with Twitter. Facebook I get – I enjoy ‘virtually’ communicating with a curated group of friends and acquaintances. But Twitter – it all seems a bit too spongy. Everyone and anyone can read your tweets. And the Twitter bird has a limited vocabulary – 140 characters or less – so how much useful, interesting, well written information can possibly be communicated?
Strategy. What’s needed is a strategy. I have a choice to make: am I going to be a social media whore, get myself 3,000 ‘followers’ and succumb to the illusion of popularity? Tweet out every little inane thing I do – I’m having a drink at a bar, I have a new haircut, my toenail clippings just spelled out I heart U?
Or am I going to be all business and tweet out pure information to promote a project (which is basically what I’m doing for my Belgo Report). Which seems a bit cold and calculated, but some people have very, very little time. They are only ready to digest information in micro-blurbs, so I guess info-tweets could be a useful service. But do I want this to be my audience?
I pondered this as I stared at the Twitter home screen, with its continuous scroll of “Top Tweets”, a cascade of useless snippets of verbage intermingled with news flashes, and opinions by famous nobodies. It occured to me that tweets are not actual content, but at best links to actual content. And at worst random snippets of conversation between a myriad of navel gazers.
Tweet, tweet, tweet. It’s the 21st Century, and I know I need to get on board. But does the principle of quality over quantity still apply here? How much can content be reduced before it becomes meaningless? What can I, as an artist, contribute to this platform? After all, even Yoko Ono, creative goddess, has a Twitter account. Come on, Bettina.
So, I’ve come up with two solutions. My ‘regular’ Twitter account MyVisualVoice has turned into a visual diary. Ever since I got my iPhone (and especially the Hipstamatic app) I’ve been taking pictures like crazy and have been posting them on Twitpic. It’s fun for me to look back at what I’ve been up to in picture form, and it’s coherent with my art practice. I now decided to take a photo every day, and have been doing so for a few weeks now. Not mind boggling, but it’s an idea.
To address the issue of missing content, I started up a new Twitter account: MyCorvidVoice. To re-introduce quality content into the ‘Twittersphere’, I’m tweeting out a piece of literature in its entirety. In 140 character bursts, a story is being told from cover to cover. I’m tweeting the story out starting from the end, so as the tweets stack onto each other over time, the text transforms itself into a coherent whole which can be read in one go. Those of you who know me well will quickly realize which iconic piece of literature I chose for this project. The rest of you will have to wait until the final tweet, when I reveal the book’s title.
I’m going to mull over the Twitter thing some more, while I try to teach the little bird a more encompassing vocabulary. For now – I’m going to check how many followers I have.
