Wednesday, April 15, 2009

reCAPTCHA poetry

For those of you who don't remember, Tristan Tzara, one of the founders of Dada, used to cut up Shakespeare's sonnets one word at a time, put the words in a hat, select them at random, and reassemble them into Dadaist poetry.

Well, now it's the 21st century, and Dan and Vince are bringing you the play-at-home version. reCAPTCHA, which you've probably all done, is using internet security to digitize books and old issues of the New York Times. So everytime you solve a reCAPTCH to buy tickets to some Miley Cyrus concert or to tell your dumb friends on Facebook what color your poo was, you're helping preserve knowledge! But, if you keep a running tab, you're also creating Dadaist poetry.

Here's one I just made:

60 reply Euston 34
Rader Gatling net Schuman which Reeves Belzner;
Market price result clear-cut
Wassily success
heart hated two

Beautiful! It's like cutting up sonnets, except the interwebs are your scissors, and the whole of printed, English-language knowledge is your construction paper. Create art my friends...create art. Do it yourself here:

http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html

Vince out.

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