The Real Snail Mail project will be part of the Slow Art exhibition at the SIGGRAPH 2008 conference in August. The snails are outfitted with RFID chips. Once the project site is running again, you can send a message to their server where it will be picked up by a snail and then dropped off at some point later on. It reminds me of the experiments with data transfer via snail conducted a few years ago by Yossi Vardi and friends in Israel! From the BBC News article about the Real Snail Mail Project:
Instead of instantaneous communication, sent messages will travel at 0.03mph (0.05km/h) and could take days, weeks or even months to arrive…."One thing technology promises us is speed, acceleration, more of everything in less time," said Paul Smith, a visual artist working on the project.
"Culturally, we seem obsessed with immediacy. Time is not to be taken but crammed to bursting point."
Link to BBC News article, Link to RealSnailMail site,
Link to SIGGRAPH 2008 "Slow Art" page
Previously on BB:
• Data transfer via snail is faster than ADSL and pigeons Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)
