my latest project is online:
the project vy2ms gives customs officers, agencies and police
forces new labor. it generates documents that can be read, searched and
deciphered by otherwise underemployed personal. it challenges them with
enigmatic language and mysterious images and diagrams.
the underlying program is a quite complex document generator. it generates images with various algorithms from simple randomness to cellular automata.
the texts are generated with some computer linguistic algorithms: first the program generates a set of syllables with a specific letter distribution. out of this set of syllables a number of nouns, verbs, articles and other words are generated. these are then joined together to sentence following a simple grammar and a set of possible sentence structures.
background information
on july 16th, 2008 the US department of homeland security disclosed policies regarding border search of information:
officials
may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and
private entities for language translation, data decryption or other
reasons [...] The policies cover "any device capable of storing
information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash
drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes.
They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including
books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket
trash' or 'pocket litter.' " (washington post, august 1st, 2008)
there's little doubt that other countries or unions of countries would
like to adopt similar policies in the future. the european union is
currently (secretly) negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement (ACTA) that also would enable customs staff to search
computers and all kinds of storage media.
license
these documents are machine generated and so are free of any
restrictions regarding use. you can copy, print, publish, remix, turn
them into songs, whatever...
at the same time these documents come without any warranty at all. you
are responsible for all problems caused by the use of these documents.
