If you read my blog, it’s likely that you read a num­ber of blogs run by my friends, the unof­fi­cially orga­nized but still very real soci­ety of lady bloggers. 

As such, you’ve prob­a­bly already read count­less arti­cles about twit­ter and what a great tool it is for net­work­ing, sup­ple­ment­ing your blog, and killing time at the office…

But I want to talk about twit­ter in a dif­fer­ent way.
I want to talk about twit­ter as a means for artis­tic expression. 

I, myself, have been striv­ing to use twit­ter in an artis­tic way…but it’s so very hard to do so when you’re also try­ing to use it to facil­i­tate your social life. 

How­ever, there are some peo­ple who have pulled this off much bet­ter than I, and you should know who they are:

Who she is:

Jenny Holzer is a con­cep­tual artist, best known for her use of pro­found text in promi­nent pub­lic spaces. 

Why you should fol­low her:

Quite frankly, twit­ter is the per­fect dig­i­tal can­vas for the work she’s been putting on bill­boards, posters, and bath­room stalls for the past sev­eral decades.
It’s unclear to me whether this is Holzer’s offi­cial twit­ter, or if some­one is just repub­lish­ing her work. This doesn’t mat­ter much to me, because I just can’t get enough of what she has to say. 

Sam­ple Tweets: 

“ROMANTIC LOVE WAS INVENTED TO MANIPULATE WOMEN“
“PEOPLE WON’T BEHAVE IF THEY HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE“
“MYTH CAN MAKE REALITY MORE INTELLIGIBLE”

http://twitter.com/jennyholzer

Who he is:
Fil­maker, Marx­ist, and leader of the Sit­u­a­tion­ist Inter­na­tional, best known for writ­ing Soci­ety of the Spec­ta­cle and Com­ments on the Soci­ety of the Spectacle.

Why you should fol­low him:

Who­ever is tweet­ing Mr. DeBord’s words from the grave (DeBord died in 1994), picks selec­tions that relate to each other in suc­ces­sion. The things said are made more pro­found by what has been said before.
Unfor­tu­nately, this account has been inac­tive for sev­eral months…Perhaps new fol­low­ers will make the DeBord ghost­writer pick it up again. 

Sam­ple Tweets:

“The spec­ta­cle within soci­ety cor­re­sponds to a con­crete man­u­fac­ture of alien­ation.“
“This is why the spec­ta­tor feels at home nowhere, because the spec­ta­cle is every­where.“
“What binds the spec­ta­tors together is no more than an irre­versible rela­tion at the very cen­ter which main­tains their isolation. ”

http://twitter.com/guydebord

Who he is:

Chip Zdarsky is a car­toon­ist from toronto who’s gritty take on life is noth­ing short of hilarious.

Why you should fol­low him:

If you’re like me, and enjoy dark humor, you will laugh until you spit your morn­ing cof­fee out all over your keyboard. 

Sam­ple tweets:
“I’m going to tear you a new one, right next to the old one.“
“I find that a real con­ver­sa­tion starter on a first date is a shovel. Bring one along and see!“
“I need to believe in some­thing big­ger than myself, like, say, a seven-foot ver­sion of me.”

http://twitter.com/zdarsky

What it is:
Oblique Strate­gies is a set of pub­lished cards cre­ated by musi­cian Brian Eno, and artist Peter Schmidt. The cards are printed with odd and inter­est­ing meth­ods to solve a con­flict or dillemma.

Why you should follow:

Eno and Schmidt solve prob­lems in ways I only think of in dreams.

Sam­ple tweets:
“Take away as much mys­tery as pos­si­ble. What is left?“
“Instead of chang­ing the thing, change the world around it.“
“Ques­tion the heroic approach.”

http://twitter.com/Oblique_Chirps

Please let me know if you’re aware of other peo­ple using twit­ter in any­thing but the usual way!
Also, y’all can add me here: thi­sis­star on twit­ter.

Most of my friends use the Last.FM music service.

It tracks your music lis­ten­ing habits, matches you with other lis­ten­ers, and rec­om­mends new music for you to check out.
The coolest thing it’s done though, is release it’s API to other com­pa­nies so they can develop tools around the musi­cal data it’s gathered. 

There’s a big resource of cool tools on this page, but my favorite by far is Last­Graph.

My friend Rubin sent me a poster of his graph, which I’ve screen­grabbed below:

I’m still in the queue to import my data so I can get my own!
It’s really nice to be able to see your info dis­played in such an easy to read and well designed man­ner.
I’m also rather par­tial to the use of Greyscale Basic as their main type­face.
If only their graph­ing had a red theme…

Other cool last.FM tools:

Gen­er­ate a Sociomap using the music com­pat­i­bil­ity between you and your Last.fm friends.
Learn to play the ukelele with your favorite songs!