Sunday, August 3, 2014

Almost latest idea - writing to spammers

Artwork title: Writing to Spammers

The work is about:
- intervening the spam system
- understanding the techno-materiality of spam system e.g server, coding and mail library
- understanding the cultural logic of reading and writing spam
- criticizing the massive cultural spam industry
- counter suggesting to response to spam rather than filter it in the mailbox

How it works:

1/ Display of the animated spam address
  • A program is written to extract a spammer list for every 24 hours
    • getting latest zip file, unzip and put on web server again
  • a screen displays with fade in/out or running text of a spammer email address, one follows the other 
2/ Writing a poem to spammers 
  •  A program is written to keep sending out a spam poem to each of the spammer
    • random selection of one of my spam poems
    • need to know which one has been sent and which one hasn't 
    • need to display the sending process e.g which email address, which poem to send, status such as start sending, successfully delivered etc. 
    • auto scroll/process to display the next spam poem, logic repeats
    • * specify sender email address, subject, content, to-address
 3/ Reading spammer' email
  • A python script is written to keep listening to the email server and see if any auto reply or bounce back email 
    • continuous check (poll) request to mail server
    • download the email content, email address, timestamp, subject etc and able to mark read/delete the email on server
    • Display the email content on screen
Technical equipment and architecture:

1/ Dedicated IP server
2/ A web domain e.g www.writingtospammers.com
3/ a email address such as reply@writingtospammers.com
4/ #1> display email address }  a web page (html, jquery, php)   or python with UI framework
5/ #2> writing spam email } either php or a python script 
6/ #3> reading spam email } either php or a python script

Next actions:
1/ test script1: python ftp and get zip file, unzip and then display the text on terminal; then check UI, adjust font color, text size, animated effect and full screen
2/ test script2: python sending dummy email (smtp) and check delay/sleep syntax
3/ test script3: python receiving dummy email (pop3) 


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