My mom is pretty cool.  In addition to making the best homemade bread in Beadle County, she’s also a text messaging maven. (I wonder if she texts while making the best homemade bread in Beadle County…the thought is blowin’ my mind!)

Beyond making its way into “cool mom culture,” text messaging has been influencing art culture around the world. Here are a few reasons that SMS made me “:)” today…

The Göteborg Museum of Art in Sweden has mounted a “Talking Art” installation.  Visitors to the exhibit are basically asked, “If a work of art could talk—what would it say?”  To answer, visitors send a text message to a designated phone number and watch it appear on the speech bubble near the art piece.

Interactive SMS has also been making an appearance in the public domain. For his thesis project for Parsons School of Design’s MFA program, Paul Notzold projected texts on the side of buildings. Notzold’s presentation, called TXTual Healing, allows spectators to “make” the art by contributing their own texts.  The project has since gone international, including remounts in France, Italy, Romania, the Netherlands and China.

Philippines-based photographer Dennis S. Rito has recently put together a conceptual series of 15 photographs, titled UNLIMITXT, that explores the impact of the cell phone on modern culture.  In the photos, you can see a variety of emotions influenced by the users’ inboxes.

I <3 U, MOM!