Community: bloggers@brooklynmuseum

Nick Fortunato is the second artist selected via the open call for the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed. Similar to An Xiao’s work with Morse Code, Nick’s proposal for the feed explores the delivery of news and evolution of communication through the ages. As you’ll see, Nick came up with a great concept that will be a welcome addition to the feed:

The title of my project is “Poor SpumoniNick’s Almanack.” SpumoniNick is my Twitter handle and the Almanack I’m referring to is Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack.

This project is an attempt to draw parallels between Twitter, a modern day social networking tool and Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, perhaps the original social networking publication. 275 years after publication of Franklin’s Almanack the form still holds, only the delivery method has changed—a singular voice, communicating to the masses. Then, Franklin’s masses were Colonial America, today it’s the world.

My goal is to “skin” the Twitter feed with content directly pulled from the original Almanacks. I believe that there is very little difference between the common observations people post today on Twitter and those aphorisms and proverbs found in Franklin’s texts. I will not modernize the language, keeping it in the older English as a way to reinforce the mashing of times from then to now.

The experience for the viewer will be one where my posts, in a voice from the past, are sprinkled in with their friends modern up to the minute updates.

Images:  Poor Richard’s Almanac - 1758 - Franklin, Benjamin (author) - Philadelphia - Library of Congress