Well, I’m back now, and I wanted to let you know that I’m following back again on Twitter. I didn’t follow back for most of 2012, but I like the interaction. I get a lot of RTs and MTs and almost never reply, so following back is something I do to be interactive and say “Hey! Thanks for following @tw1tt3rart!” I’m not on “Team Followback”—I just want to follow everyone back because I like doing that. 

I just followed these 780 followers back.

People dig getting followed by @tw1tt3rart. They tweet about it, so I know the gesture lands as intended (sometimes). I don’t want @tw1tt3rart to be a ‘broadcast only’ account. Twitter is about interaction. So there you go.

I follow back manually, not automatically. I use the awesome Just Unfollow premium service to follow back (and to un-follow non-followers), so I pay a couple bucks a year and spend up to 1/5 of a second following (or unfollowing). And thereby, we interact: you’ve followed @tw1tt3rart. I saw that and clicked the follow button next to your avatar and now we’re Twitter friends. Nice. Not a big deal, but I do appreciate the follow & I’m glad all y’all enjoy the art!

I’ll try not to take any more month-long vacations. Cheers
~@tw1tt3rart AKA @MatthewHaggett

NowThis News will be premiering a suite of election night art created by @tw1tt3rart during the run up, and as the results are announced.

Follow @NowThisNews on Twitter to get the real-time #TwitterArt election coverage.

Inject some bearable fun into US Election Night with an awesome, totally non-partisan suite of Twitter art banners and drawings, including: all 50 states, Presidential candidates, pundit predictions, and key state races – illustrated by number one #TwitterArt guy – @Tw1tt3rart – and Tweeted as real-time election night coverage by the @NowThisNews team.

@tw1tt3rart says: “This is the largest #TwitterArt series I’ve made, and the most coordinated. It’s also some of my best Twitter art to date. Drake Martinet of NowThis News approached me with the idea of staging an election night unicode art blow out… covering the election in real time and using #TwitterArt to announce the results. Loved the idea, my kind of project, did it… It is an epic piece of unicode art. And totally non partisan… celebrating the spectacle of the American Election.”

Get ready to retweet! Cheer for either candidate. Celebrate the states that break your way. Tweet your way to democracy this November 6th, Election Night 2012, with @tw1tt3rart and the NowThis News team.

Follow @NowThisNews for real time election coverage in unicode art, and also because they’re cool (see below). And follow @tw1tt3rart just because. The art starts soon!

Calling Florida for… Who? Follow @NowThisNews for breaking coverage in #TwitterArt by @tw1tt3rart

NowThis News is the startup video news network that’s taking video news mobile. The most shareable takes on up-to-the-minute news – right in your pocket on our app (http://nowth.is/PM9du0) for iPhone and iPad, or follow on Facebook (fb.com/nowthisnews) and Twitter (@NowThisNews).

Note: unicode art views differently depending on browser, device, operating system, and font. It is a clever way to put illustrations into text-only environments, but does not look the same in all contexts. @tw1tt3rart’s illustrations are optimized for cross-platform readability, but some illustrations may not render correctly depending on where you view them.

Pixi – Twitterart editor and generator.

Find them on Twitter at @PixiDraw. And follow them!

PixiDraw is nice and simple to use. It creates solidly-built unicode art that is optimized for Twitter, designed to read on the best range of browsers, platforms, and devices. I appreciate how streamlined Pixi is, using a small set of compatible “safest” characters. The great thing is that user can draw without having to think about row-by-row construction and object properties like I do. One can draw intuitively and edit fairly easily.

It was made by the excellent Twitter artist @TakashiFujita so I’m not surprised that it works so nicely.

The drawing screen of the Pixi #TwitterArt editor

To use Pixi, open up the app [link]. You’ve got a palette and a canvas. Click on the shape you want to use (palette), then click on the square you want it to go in (canvas). Draw with lines (the first half of the palette) and blocks (the second half). Leave blank squares blank (double clicking will clear them) and Pixi will fill them in for you. Pixi uses the same character I do to represent “blank” space (lightest horizontal dotted line). I like that. On the “next” screen, you see your canvas framed before you Tweet.

See how the art is going to look and add #Hashtags

Pixi makes 16 character wide- 7 line tall “stacked” #TwitterArt. This takes up 119 characters, so you have room to add a hashtag or two before you tweet.

I’ve used the app and I like it. This is the first piece I made with Pixi and it worked great:

┈┈╭━━╮┈┈╭━━╮┈┈┈┈┈┈┃╭━╯┈┈┃┃▋▋━▅┈┈┈┈┃┗━━━━┫┃╱╰━┫┈┈┈┈╰┓╱╱╱╱╰╯╱┳━╯┈┈┈┈┈┃┏┳┳━┓┏┳┃┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┃┃┃┃┈┃┃┃┃┈┈┈┈▔▔▔┗┛┗┛▔┗┛┗┛▔▔▔▔ #TwitterArt

— @tw1tt3rart (@tw1tt3rart) June 12, 2012

Make Twitter Art with Pixi

I think this PixiDraw project is pretty cool, so here’s what I’m going to do: I will check out what people make with Pixi [search] and do some retweeting. I’ll hang a bunch of people’s creations in my Twitter-based gallery, @tw1tt3rGALLERY (in other words: I’ll retweet them with that account and call it an “art show”

AND, I’ll retweet a couple / few with @tw1tt3rart (to my 100K+ followers)

It isn’t a contest, just have fun. But still, a few rules:

• On the art you want considered for retweeting, please use the hashtag #TwitterArt. @Tw1tt3rart uses that tag just about always.
• Be original! Make your own art, don’t straight-up copy something you’ve seen elsewhere.
• Today is June 14. I’ll look at art tweeted through Pixi (tagged #twitterart) for one week, until June 21.

I can’t promise I’ll RT you or everything you make, but I’d love to put a lot of pieces in my “Gallery” then, at the end of the week, to RT at least two or three favorites with my main account. I don’t trust Twitter’s search results to be complete, so if you want to be sure I haven’t missed your art, let me know. @tw1tt3rart gets a lot of MTs so please mention it it @tw1tt3rGALLERY. And include a link to the tweet if you would. I’ll try and check the stream daily.

Make some art!

Lately I haven’t been making as many #TwitterArt, not quite one-a-day. But I keep an eye out for trending topics that could work for a unicode illustration. “Happy National Siblings Day” seemed good. I did a picture of a sister-and-brother, got enough RT button to make a Top Tweet in a Top Trend—and enough to get a second “echo” TT…

As is often the case, some other Twitter user will grab the art and use it to get another Top Tweet. Here, Twitter made eight TT in an hour. Me and my echo are #7 and #8. She got 50+ RT, 5 faves. I got 50+ / 12…

I used to be annoyed by copiers, but it is such an ingrained part of the Twitter dynamic that it doesn’t bother me any more. Almost never. And, like here—I’m psyched when my content takes a double-share of Top Tweets. Nice for her that she got good RTs off my drawing. But good for me that I’m inundating the system with my content. #Winning. #LOL

I’m all about systems and feedback and how my strings of unicode propagate. Copies, and copies of copies. All that intellectual business (seriously: I seem to be making Twitter greeting cards out of unicode blocks, but I’m using my MFA in postmodern theory and my background in math to explore art issues with this project). But honestly, it is also gratifying to PWN like that. Go poststructuralism, aaaaand I’m psyched that 150 RT in 2 hrs “could have been better.”

Enough patting myself on the back. Off to work. Please do comment! I’d love to hear back from people who are into the #TwitterArt by @tw1tt3rart

HAPPY┊NATIONAL┊SIBLINGS┊DAY┊╱▔▔▔▔╲┊┊╭╭╱╰╰╮╰╮╭▏╭╮╭╮▕╮╭╯▍┈▍┈╰╮╰╰╮▔╭╮▔╭╯╭▕┗╮┈┈▕╰╮┊┃┖━━┛┃╭╯▕┗━╯┈╱▏╰┊┃╲▂▂╱┃╯╭╯╲▂▂╱┊╲╰ #TwitterArt

— @tw1tt3rart (@tw1tt3rart) April 10, 2012

FA: How is New Twitter for Twitterart?

ME: Twitter is a moving target. It was not made for unicode art, so we (unicode artists on Twitter) adapt pretty readily… The line width that makes my kind of tweet art work has changed back to what it was in the old Twitter, so some of my recent art doesn’t read right in some situations… I guess about the last four months of my tweets look broken on the Twitter web site, on-page, for most users. But they still look right in “status” view, on devices, in apps, on other web sites where they looked right before, and when embedded. So… it is what it is, part of the shifting baseline. The effected art does include some gems, like the 2-1/2 men #TwitterArt that @aplusk Ashton Kutcher retweeted immediately after his debut in that show. But that is the way it goes. Twitter changes.

It seemed like the people who work closest to my style—Karen, Greg, Nao especially—all adapted at once to the new rules with little ado.

There is now unfortunately less overlap between Tweet art that looks good on the web and art that looks good on an iPhone. Aside from that, I like the new new twitter much better than the old new twitter. Overall, it will have a positive impact on my Tweet art. Especially, the embed tweet feature, with which twitter art can be nicely displayed in other web sites. And especially especially with that dreadful sidebar from the Old New Twitter gone… From a “TwitterArt” perspective New New Twitter gets my thumbs up.

MCH 12.26.11

I’ll be looking forward to seeing the piece when it comes out! Check out The Daily Dot, LLC. The Hometown Newspaper of the World Wide Web. Follow @dailydot and their intrepid social media newshound @fernalfonso on Twitter.

The "best tweet" Vinny Guadagnino ever did was by copying @tw1tt3rart. He's not the only one.

I’m sometimes bothered to not get credit… But I’m more interested in how my art propagates through the social medium of Twitter, sometimes exploding virally, constantly self-perpetuating and re-shaping its pattern of occurrence. As well as one-off copies like Vinny, there are entire accounts dedicated to tweeting my unicode art without credit. Beyond getting credit or not, I’m flooding the system with my content, making viral art… I’ll take that as a win.

Follow @tw1tt3rart

HelloI I’m just getting this site set up…
The design is an homage to #NewNewTwitter.
I built it with WordPress… I love WordPress [more]
My name is Matt Haggett, I make @tw1tt3rart

I like the New New Twitter (not that Old New Twitter so well)… I especially like the “embed tweet” functionality! It is a great opportunity for me to archive some of my art-tweets. Here is a recent tweet embedded:

┈┈┈┈╰╮╰╮┈┈┈COFFEE┈┈┈┈╱▔╰╮╰╮▔╲┈TIME┈☼┈┈▕╲▂▂▂▂▂▂╱▏┈┈┈┈┈┈┈▏┈┈┈┈┈┈▕━╮┈┈┈┈┈┈▏┈┈┈┈┈┈▕┈┃┈┈┈┈┈┈▏┈┈┈┈┈┈▕━╯┈┈┈┈┈┈╲▂▂▂▂▂▂╱┈┈┈┈┈ #TwitterArt

— @tw1tt3rart (@tw1tt3rart) December 19, 2011