What makes this post relevant to Art Meets Commerce is that The Blair Witch Project was really the first movie to use full advantage of what the internet had to offer (and this was well before web 2.0!). I remember sitting at my computer (Windows ‘95! AOL 7.2!) and watching whatever new video would be posted on the website and follow the story of the three missing film students. Not only was the preview terrifying but people thought that it was in fact a real documentary and three students did actually go missing.

By creating a very comprehensive website with maps, footage, and stories about the witch that haunted the woods outside Burkittsville, Maryland,  The Blair Witch Project marketing team managed to capture the attention of an audience. They were able to keep them coming back for more and blur the lines between fiction and reality. Brilliant.

“Caffeine,” he rants as he points to the word. “Does this say ‘caffeine’ to you?”

It’s fascinating how form can follow function, and function can follow form, in everything from physiology to poetry to words.

Humans have opposable thumbs, and this little digit allows us to do everything from type blogs to build houses.

I recently learned (at New York Public Library’s excellent exhibit on Jack Kerouac) that Gregory Corso’s famous poem, “Bomb” was itself a bomb until Kerouac shaped its words into a mushroom cloud.

And, of course, there are fonts. I left Helvetica and couldn’t help but be amazed just how present the font is in our day-to-day lives. I can’t walk a block in New York without seeing it: the font that can be superimposed on a grid, the font without little “feet” on its edges. These are changes without meaning.

And yet ….

I can’t imagine waiting at a sign that says STOP or STOP or STOP .