LOVE LETTERS IN YOUR E-MAILBOX

New York, NY, June 20, 2001 — Treasure/Crumbs is pleased to announce the launch of the Love Letters dispatcher. Not a virus, this feature of World of Awe (WOA) will enable subscribers to receive love letters via email approximately once a month through 2003.

WOA is an ongoing cross-media project since 1995. Conceived by artist Yael Kanarek, it is based on an original non-linear narrative that uses the ancient genre of the traveler's tale to explore the connections between storytelling, memory & technology.

To subscribe: http://www.worldofawe.net

About the Letters
In the Sunset/Sunrise, a desert terrain locked into the mindframe between night and day, a traveler searches for a lost treasure. According to the website, the traveler's journal and the letters were found on a laptop. An examination of the letters demonstrates that they are all addressed to an absent lover, though, both the traveler and the lover remain obscure in their identities.

The letters are reminiscent of 19th century romanticism infused with magical realism. Whether it is the lament over the absence of the lover or a comical declaration of loyalty to the floppy disk, the collection of letters portray a wide range of themes joined by the unusual signature: "Yours forever, your sunset/sunrise forever yours, yours forever yours."

The Network
The Love Letters dispatcher expresses the capacity of the Internet to reappropriate and recontextualize artistic content. Such metabolism of content is also built into the underlying mechanism of WOA as a cross-media project. While the web requires a person to visit, an email reaches out, thus enhancing the sense of personal intimacy to the threshold of eerieness.

"The Love Letters dispatcher furthers the manifestation of WOA on the Internet and regulates an activity that was practiced spontaneously as early as 1996," says Ms. Kanarek. "Viewing a web page and reading an email are two different network events and this service as an extension to the website responds to these differences."

About World of Awe
A treasure hunt takes place in a desert terrain called the Sunset/Sunrise, where the determination to find the lost treasure meets nostalgia for speculated technology and longing for a loved one left behind. Treasure crumbsfound in excavation sites, oddly, resemble candy sprinkles. Written in the literary style of magical realism, WOA contains a collection of love letters that open from digital landscapes and journal entries that describe events occurring through the expedition. Also included are detailed technical descriptions of three navigation tools: The map, the moodRingBaby and the magnifying glass.

About the Artist
Yael Kanarek is a media artist who has been developing WOA for the pastsix years. The latest rendition of the website was launched in July 2000. Previous versions have been archived in the Rhizome Artbase. Ms. Kanarek is arecipient of The Alternative Museum Digital Commission 2000 and NYFA fellowships award 2001in the computer arts category. Currently, an artist-in-residence at Harvestworks, she is collaborating with composer Yoav Gal to create a music CD. WOA has been included in festivals around the world. Yael Kanarek is represented by Michele Thursz gallery.

The Love Letters dispatcher is programmed and executed by software artist & Rhizome editor Alex Galloway.

Contact: Yael Kanarek, yael@treasurecrumbs.com