Tiny Awards
Tiny Awards
Crawlspace, Tumblrs, Are.na and Matt, Matt, Matt and Matt
Dear reader
89, 11, 4, 11, 19 and 10. It took six threads, three months and a total of 144 emails for Matt1 and me to ideate, discuss, plan and - now - launch Tiny Awards: a small prize awarded to a website embodying the idea of a small, playful and heartfelt web. The award comes with a wood-carved trophy, a cash prize made possible by another Matt2 and features a selection committee with poetic web pioneers including a third and fourth Matt3.
I’m happy to welcome this Tiny Awards4 to the world and encourage you to nominate your own projects and those filling your bookmarks. The internet is abundant with magical sites, so let’s celebrate them and their caretakers.
With care
Kristoffer
Wayside flowers
Tribes of Eclipse is a scroll poem.
Peepslab is a tool to generate people.
Hardware Emocional is !??
Field notes
The quote below illustrates the style of the post: niche ~~~~~~~.
“Joan G. Stark, A.K.A. jgs or Spunk, is probably the most popular and prolific ASCII artist of the 1990s and the ’00s, who left a strong imprint on online amateur practices and aesthetics. Stark started making ASCII art in 1995 as part of the <alt.ascii-art> newsgroup on USENET. Being passionate about folklore and popular art, she devoted herself to represent in a “line style” way (that could be seen as close to the “ligne claire” style in comics) countless mythological creatures, animals, landscape elements, objects and scenes of everyday life.” —Adel Faure
I applaud the resurrection of journals publishing digital literature and poetry. HTML Review is a favourite — but so is Crawlspace. The second edition contains two contributions from always poetic Alicia Guo. Remember to view the source code for artist interviews.
For us, Crawlspace was almost nothing, a tiny shift in the texture of darkness, until it was there, almost eerily whole. When we look through the pieces in this issue, we feel that same sense of awe; the sense of being pulled into focus. — Rory Green and Hannah Jenkins
Are.na remains the best place on the internet. It also hosts the best blog with unexpected topics, a curious tone, and a rhythmic lure into foreign territories. The linked post took me to a performance lecture with Anne Carson on the history of sky writing. Read it and continue with the latest blog post, Wikipedia as Sacred Text.
Clouds might be nonbinary icons. They are neither liquid nor gas. Gasses diffuse, liquids flow. Clouds do both and neither. They ride with the air, are resting sites for droplets, and become visible through solid ice crystals and the dust particles they form on. — Noa Mori
Collections
In August, when the sunflowers bloom, we gather people who expand what the web is and can be at the inaugural edition of Naive Yearly. It takes place in Copenhagen at the National Film School of Denmark.
Last week this letter was sent to 1619 inboxes. I’m keeping it donation-based and it will always be free for everyone. Currently, thirty-three people support me with a paid subscription. Logo by Studio Hollywood. Photograph by Ana Šantl.
I still have never met Matt nor spoken on the phone or video called him. But I know that he writes Web Curios, the most comprehensive newsletter about the internet.
Thank you Shelby Wilson, Andy Baio, Spencer Chang, Linda Liukas, Matt Round, Shen, Bianca Aguilar and Matt Webb for joining the committee.
Attentive readers might realize that Tiny Awards is an iteration of WWWonderful Awards.