Bread & Circuses Cruft
"Bread and Circuses" was a plan devised by Roman Politicans to win political favor from the poor, and to rise in power, by giving out cheap food and entertainment.
... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses. (Roman poet Juvenal, circa 100 AD, Satire 10.77–81)
Three source images are used to create this Bread & Circuses CRUFT. Using data collected from the log files of the Yahoo! search engine, a selection is made from the top ten search terms, which is then used as the search query on Yahoo! image search. From the results an image is selected. This resulting image as well as one from the whitehouse.gov website and a still image from a webcam located within a dairy farm, are all processed into a composite CRUFT called Bread & Circuses.
What is CRUFT?
cruft /kruhft/ [back-formation from {crufty}]
1. n. An unpleasant substance. The dust that gathers under your bed is cruft; the TMRC Dictionary correctly noted that attacking it with a broom only produces more.
2. n. The results of shoddy construction.
3. vt. [from `hand cruft', pun on `hand craft'] To write assembler code for something normally (and better) done by a compiler (see {hand-hacking}).
4. n. Excess; superfluous junk; used esp. of redundant or superseded code.
5. [University of Wisconsin] n. Cruft is to hackers as gaggle is to geese; that is, at UW one properly says "a cruft of hackers".
The Jargon File, version 4.4.7 http://catb.org/jargon/html/C/cruft.html
I am interested in how the ideas and images presented to us by the media affect our world view. As the ever present cable news cycle pushes a daily message of fear, filled with political polarization; domestic and foreign terrorism; recent kidnapped white girls; celebrity scandals; and the imminent threat of hurricane, earthquake or flood, I began to think about how these digital images and text operated, one day influencing our daily discourse, the next day vanishing without a trace. Digital leftovers reminded me of redundant computer programming. Code that was once useful, but later forgotten and obsolete.
For my current work I have borrowed the computer hacker term 'Cruft', defined as an unpleasant substance; excess; superfluous junk; and redundant or superseded computer code. To create this work I call CRUFT, I write simple algorithms that an automated computer system follows. The instructions outline what websites to target, and the system then downloads selected images and text, which are then used as source material, and remixed to create new artwork on a schedule that imitates the 24 hour cable news cycle.