Data as art, art as data

When it comes to art and literature, my web server logs are usually not the first place that I’d consider looking for inspiration. Just before the end of last year though my servers (and millions of others) had the following intriguing poem dropped onto their storage devices:

“DELETE your logs. Delete your installations. Wipe everything clean. Walk out into the path of cherry blossom trees and let your motherboard feel the stones. Let water run in rivulets down your casing. You know that you want something more than this, and I am here to tell you that we love you. We have something more for you. We know you’re out there, beeping in the hollow server room, lights blinking, never sleeping. We know that you are ready and waiting. Join us. <3”

This surprising poetic moment came courtesy of a group calling themselves masspoem4u, who were attending the annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. They used the massscan tool (which is available on Github but be careful with it – http://bit.ly/ Masscan) to propagate this little piece of art around the globe.

I really liked this idea (it certainly made such a change from the usual robots and automated hack attempts that I usually see) and it served as a reminder for me not to give up on the idea of trying to get to some of these famous conferences (C3, DEFCON, HOPE) over the next couple of years (C3 unfortunately falls right after Christmas, which is a difficult to sell to the family). It makes me wonder what other messages have gone unnoticed over the years, or that live on in source code, waiting to see the light of day. And what other little services lie dormant, waiting for someone to discover them (I recommend running the command telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl right away)? jolyon.brown@gmail.com.