newsPrint is an artifact from a bygone future: a repurposed dot-matrix printer, printing out tweets from the most popular newspapers around the world. As it prints lines of text and imagery, the paper rises by way of unseen forces forty feet into the air. newsPrint invites the audience to reflect on their relationship to world events and the role of media in that relationship. As an artwork, it can be approached in a number of different ways:
As a lighthearted commentary on the current state of journalism, it demonstrates the struggle of traditional media companies to maintain relevance. By returning the content of the news agencies back to print, it not only illustrates the absurdity of accurately capturing world events in one's social media feed, but how many headlines have changed to trivialities, gossip and click-bait to grab a new generation's attention.
As an technological anachronism, newsPrint proposes an history where the development of the Internet and social media have far outpaced screen technology, and are relegated to a paper ticker. It references early imaginings of the primary application of television- to display newspapers. By presenting such an absurd pairing of technological timelines, it begins a conversation about how new media repurpose and adapt their predecessors.
Finally, newsPrint physicalizes the act of receiving information from the world. A physical event occurs in the world, is digitized, disseminated and is reconstituted physically on the page. Events of different scales create different amounts of activity and physical action on the receiving end. The results then rise out of view, much like news on one's smartphone. However, unlike digital news, newsPrint has made a physical version that can never be altered or deleted.