In a day and age where technology has provided us with giant leaps forward, it is no surprise that the most popular aspects of said technology are the humorous ones. Take, for example the internet. Putting aside porn for a moment, one of the most popular meme's - a theoretical unit of cultural information--is the act of putting bad spelling with photos.
The most popular example is the LOLcats that have appeared everywhere. You may not be a cat person, but no doubt you would have encountered one of these. The cute kittens in various photographic poses, with impossibly bad spelling and grammar.
Of course, this has moved to a point where you may as well describe the meme as LOL. You can make a LOL out of anything from political figures to zombies.
And it is the zombies that Paul Notzold has taken a shining too.
In an art exhibit that will be showing on the streets of Brooklyn over Halloween, TXT of the Living Dead is Notzold's personal art creation, what he describes as an "SMS-enabled interactive street performance."
Notzold took the original 1968 horror flick Night of the Living Dead and broke it down in to 500 still screen-shots. Within those frames, there were 150 frames that he added text bubbles too. Text messages were sent by the general public, and whenever a speech bubble was filled, the story was allowed to go on to the next slide.
The exhibit aired at the Los Angeles Wired NextFest, where apart from a small glitch with unsavory SMS's being introduced in to the equation, the exhibit went off to popular demand.
But there was very little, if any, censoring going on. That is part of the charm, according to the artist. It's all uncensored, and that's the beauty of it. Where else can you write something so spontaneous and anonymous and see it projected so large?"
In a setup that consists of nothing more than a Mac computer, a projector, camera and generator, the idea is inspirational. Notzold always manages to get a mobile number within the country he is visiting, making it easy and affordable for locals to get involved.
And the idea is wired for fun. While a various few are related to zombie activities, most are not. Many are simply so far out there that Night of the Living Dead has never had this many laughs. Imagine a confession of love coming out of the mouth of a member of the living dead.
Notzold's favorite location so far has been Rome, where he managed to project his "film" up on the Coliseum.
Joshua Hill, a Geek’s-Geek from Melbourne, Australia, Josh is an aspiring author with dreams of publishing his epic fantasy, currently in the works, sometime in the next 5 years. A techie, nerd, sci-fi nut and bookworm.
