Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs - Twistori

Twistori, created by Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs, cleverly uses the Twitter social networking website to tap into and display the thoughts of the thousands of users at once. Based on the work of Sep Kamvar and Jonathan Harris of “We Feel Fine”, Twistori seeks to reveal the unconscious patterns of internet thought. Twistori searches Twitter feeds for the words love, think, believe, feel and wish and displays the tweets containing those words in the appropriate list.

Although the voices being shown are anonymous, they feel connected simply by being sorted by five simple words. A sense of community and identity is created as the feeds scroll up the page, almost developing thought pattern for the internet, even though it is just an aggregation of messages.


Year(s) Created: 2008

Media: Website

Artist Statement

twistori, our first excursion into Twitter visualizations, serving up 4 mil page views a month (described as "gentle and intelligent" by NYT Magazine)

Exhibition History

Twistori has been available online since 2008 at the following website.

http://twistori.com/

Image Sources

Photograph. Ajaxian. 29 Apr. 2008. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. http://ajaxian.com/archives/twistori-telling-a-story-with-tweets-and-scriptaculous.

Beale, Scott. Twistori. 2008. Photograph. Laughing Squid. 28 Apr. 2009. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. http://laughingsquid.com/twistori-a-first-person-visualization-of-twitter/.

Catone, Josh. 2008. Photograph. Read Write Web. 29 Apr. 2008. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twistori_twitter_experiment.php.

Bibliography

Hoy, Amy, and Thomas Fuchs. "Hi, there." Slash7. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. http://slash7.com/company/.

Hoy, Amy. "How We Tap into The Twitter Zeitgeist for SXSW, Internet Week and More." Slash7. 4 June 2009. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. http://slash7.com/2009/06/04/how-we-tap-the-twitter-zeitgeist-for-sxsw-internet-week-more/.

Almaer, Dion. "Twistori: Telling a story with Twitter and Script.aculo.us." Ajaxian. 29 Apr. 2008. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. http://ajaxian.com/archives/twistori-telling-a-story-with-tweets-and-scriptaculous.

Catone, Josh. "Twistori: A Twitter Zeritgeist Social Experiment." Read Write Web. 29 Apr. 2008. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twistori_twitter_experiment.php.