Twit2Art transforms your tweet into art

In a former entry I promised to tell more about a great Twitter-initiative. As a matter of fact, it’s very simple, yet amazing. It brings the virtual Twitter world to the ‘real’ world, a bit like twunch does.

As you know Twitter is a micro-blogging system in which people send messages to their friends and contacts. They report about what they are eating, about great websites they discovered, about their lives in general,…

Well, the Belgian artist Jan Leenders came up with a great idea: send me a tweet and I’ll make an artwork of it. The first one who jumps on the initiative pays 1 euro, the second one 2 euros,…And so on. I am number 34, which means I paid 34 euro for my twitter art. Jan has finished his 20th piece of art at the moment so I am patiently waiting for the result. For an overview of his work till now, visit the Twit2Art website.

The text I chose?

Yes, I admit it. I stole the text. From Heather Nova, one of my favourite artists. It’s great to have something virtual transformed into something touchable. And I really wonder what my grandchildren will think about this in 50 years. Will they laugh about the way we used technology? Will they understand? At any case, the piece of art will always remind me of my ‘Twitter-period’. “Yes, yes, your grandma used to Twitter” 😉

Update: in the meantime I received an email from artist Jan thanking me. Because of this blog post the Online Journalism Blog jumped on the story and ordered a 36th piece of art. Great!!

New Year’s cake and a news show in your living room

The story of our New Year’s cake

Happy New Year 🙂 Two weeks ago we received a gorgeous cake at HasseltLokaal. And who was it from? Well, it came from a man who works at the hotel schoof of Hasselt and is a volunteer for the sports club Initia Hasselt. He wanted to thank us for the exposure the school and the club got thanks to HasseltLokaal. Grrrrrreat 🙂

At the Kortom conference on the 18th of December I told the attendees exactly this. Clubs, schools and other organisations never really had a platform to post their events and announcements on. The events are usually too small to appear in a newspaper. That’s why some of them put news about their organisation on their websites, but nobody unless members or sympathisers, visits this website. Now 30.000 unique visitors a month can see interesting club and school news on HasseltLokaal.

Which results in yummie cakes 🙂 A citizen reporter told me this week that the handball Club Initia Hasselt got new supporters thanks to HasseltLokaal. How great is that!

The bid for a tweet and a news show in your living room

By the way, the tweet of Bart De Waele, about which I told you in a former post, has finally led to a bid of 400 euros!! The brand interaction company These Days advertised for a new job site of theirs. Not a bad idea, since Bart’s followers on Twitter are all (or should all be) very interactive, digidynamic, innovative,…people. Bart himself calls his 3000st post ‘the most expensive tweet ever’ and he is probably right 🙂

Bart is not the only in action on Ebay for the charity project Music for Life (organised by Radio station Studio Brussel). The public news channel is even giving away a ‘news show in your living room’ to the highest bidder on Ebay. Right now, the highest bid is 3.296 euro!

Sell your tweet, that’s at least what Bart De Waele does

Bart De Waele is one of the people I follow on Twitter. He is about to write his 3.000st post on the platform and was wondering what to write…He asked his followers for help, he really didn’t know what to do…Should it be a fantastic post no one will ever forget or just a trivial one? Sorrows, sorrows, 😉

Bu the sorrow is over, Bart will give his 3.000st tweet (a post on Twitter) to the highest bidder. In other words, he put his offer on Ebay. Any company or person can bid until the 16th of December. And what does the bidder get then? Well, Bart has more than 250 followers on Twitter and they are not the least. It is in other words quite a chance for innovating companies, commercial guys who want to experiment,…to reach a very creative-technical-commercial-digital-innovative-and-I-don’t-know-what-else ‘audience’.

I wonder whether anyone else somewhere else had an idea like that? At any case, I hope there will be a bid soon.  And I’m quite curious on the outcome and the responses.

By the way, the highest bid will go to the charity project Music For Life.

UPDATE: 5 minutes after publishing this entry, the first bid was a fact. Let the game begin 🙂