I bet we all have opinions about spam and most of it unprintable.
Alex Dragulescu’s solution is not only printable but beautiful.
The Romanian-born Dragulescu, ’05, now manager of UCSD’s
Experimental Game Lab, “recycles” spam email—with
a computer program he wrote for his M.F.A. thesis in visual arts.
The program uses algorithms to convert junk messages into 3-D
electronic “sculptures.” “I was interested
in this piece of
data that everybody is so quick to discard,” Dragulescu told
the Chronicle of Higher Education.
By assigning values and characteristics to the text found in these
emails (so that the word “credit” signals a color, for
instance), Dragulescu turns all-too-familiar come-ons for prescription
drugs or hot tips about the stock market into things of beauty.
In the future he plans to experiment with literature as a data
source as well. So how would a plant derived from Shakespeare’s Romeo
and Juliet compare to one from a Viagra spam? 
Contributors to Making Waves: Mario Aguilera, '89, Marnette Federis, '06, Beverly Gallagher, '98, Raymond Hardie and Inga Kiderra.
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