distributed

Lo·go·zo·a n [fr. Gk logos word + zoia animals] (2005) 1 : word animals : textual organisms 2 : a phylum or subkingdom of linguistic entities that are represented in almost every kind of habitat and include aphorisms, anti-aphorisms, maxims, minims, unapologetic apothegms, neokoans, sayings, left-unsaids, shamelessly proverbialist word-grabs, epigrammatological disquisitions, lapidary confections, poemlets, gnomic microtales, instant fables, and other varieties of conceptual riffs

Words change everything. We create poems and stories to free the world from itself, to reveal the many feral faces of life. But ironically these liberating words are usually imprisoned on the page or computer screen. Out in the “real” world of day-to-day activity, we use words more bluntly. We put labels and signs on things to tame them—identify, categorize, explain, instruct, proclaim ownership. What if instead the labels could liberate the everyday world from the literal, proclaim rather than cover up the mysteries? What if they could become Logozoa—textual organisms that infest the literal with metaphor and give impetuous life and breath to meaning?

Adopt-A-Zoa

Find out what happens when you let word animals infest your daily life. Download Logozoa, print them onto your own stickers, and let them loose in your home or neighborhood. Bring a little metaphor into your routine. Keep them around the house and discover why they make fascinating pets or release them into the wild. You have 379 different creatures to choose from.

E-Dopt-A-Zoa

E-dopt a Logozoan and add it to your Web site. Your Logozoan will change every time it’s viewed, taking one of 379 different forms.

Logozoo

The next best thing to Logoz in your own hood is a visit to the Logozoo. Here you’ll see Logozoa in a natural-habitat preserve made from the nooks and crannies of daily routine, the unexpected exoticisms of everyday life, the out-of-the-ordinary often lurking in ordinary places. No bars and cages here. From the safety and comfort of your own browser, you can witness one of Nature’s true spectacles—the figurative overrunning the literal. Our zoo contains 1153 photos of 629 inhabitants, with more arriving almost daily from the US, Europe, and South America. One made it all the way from Hell. Another came from a place even more frightening—the Massachusetts Department of Motor Vehicles in Waltham.

Logoshow

Some Logozoa display a remarkable ability to slip the bonds of textual stasis and achieve flights of logomotion. Come enjoy the animated show.

Save-A-Zoa

Stickers in the wild face numerous man-made and natural threats. Determined preservation efforts are necessary to ensure that these unique creatures do not go the way of so many once-endangered, now-extinct species. Photograph your Logozoa and send these offspring to us where they will find a happy, safe home in our Logozoo.

Soothbooth

Bring those vexing questions to the Soothbooth and let us turn them into vexing answers. We have a unique colony of Logozoa on duty here that responds to any sort of question you might want to pose.

Soothcircuit

If you want deeper, less direct answers than those offered at the quick-service Soothbooth, take your questions to the Soothcircuit. The Logozoa here are guaranteed to provide insights and prognostications of the most thought-provoking quality.

(Source: Author's descripiton on the project site)

A later version of The Legible City (1989) encompasses all the experiences offered by the original version, but introduces an important new multi-user functionality that to a large extent becomes its predominant feature. In the Distributed Legible City there are two or more bicyclists at remote locations who are simultaneously present in the virtual environment.They can meet each other (by accident or intentionally), see abstracted avatar representations of each other, and when they come close to each other they can verbally communicate with each other.While the Distributed Legible City shows the same urban textual landscape as the original Legible City, this database now takes on a new meaning. The texts are no longer the sole focus of the user's experience, but instead becomes the con_text (both in terms of scenery and content) for the possible meetings and resulting conversations (meta_texts) between the bicyclists. In this way a rich new space of co-mingled spoken and readable texts is generated. In other words the artwork changes from being merely a visual experience, into becoming a visual ambiance for social exchange between visitors to that artwork.As a result of the increasingly ubiquitous nature of the Internet and the maturing of 3D interaction techniques, there is a growing need to define aesthetic frameworks for the technological development of new social interaction and interface paradigms for content rich, inter-connected, shared virtual environments. The Legible City has been used as a context to explore these issues, adding a space of distributed multi-user social engagement to the space of interactive spectacle. This paradigm is a novel one for art, embedding and transforming its representational practices in the the new and evolving net condition.

(Source: Shaw's description from project page)

A short story where each word was tattooed on the skin of a volunteer. These volunteers were the only people who saw the full text of the story. The website documents the work using photographs of tattooed words, a map showing where the words "live", and describing the concept: "From this time on, participants will be known as "words". They are not understood as carriers or agents of the words they bear, but as their embodiments. As a result, injuries to the printed text, such as dermabrasion, laser surgery, tattoo cover work or the loss of body parts, will not be considered to alter the work. Only the death of words effaces them from the text. As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will also have died. The author will make every effort to attend the funerals of her words."