New York’s Museum of Modern Art Acquires the @ Symbol: “

The Department of Architecture and Design at New York’s famous Museum of Modern Art has acquired what is arguably its most famous work of art to date — the @ symbol.

Because the @ symbol is owned by no one, the acquisition is symbolic — pun hopefully not intended — but @ will nevertheless be placed on display. The museum will exhibit renderings of @ in several typefaces, and will label them as it might label works made from or on differing materials.

The decision was made in response to the symbol’s radical rise in prominence in the age of the Internet. @ is actually hundreds of years old, but until the late 20th century, it was an arcane device used in shipping manifests and accounting books. It evolved to another plane in the zeitgeist when American engineer Ray Tomlinson was looking for a way to concisely reference users’ locations within a network while working on ARPANet.

Tomlinson observed that the @ symbol was placed on keyboards because of its use in accounting, but that it was rarely if ever used outside of that limited scope. Thus, it was up for grabs as far as he was concerned. Now when we send an e-mail, we send it to a person @ a domain — his or her digital dwelling. @ has become one of the world’s most ubiquitous and unifying symbols, connecting people across every cultural border.

It continues to evolve even now, as its usage on Twitter, Facebook and other services has made it a sign of identity. I am not samuelaxon on Twitter; I am @samuelaxon on Twitter. The development of this new meaning was almost an accident, but that usage has already become common.

MoMA Senior Curator Paola Antonelli wrote of the symbol, ‘It might be the only truly free — albeit not the only priceless — object in our collection.’ Free but priceless — like the @ symbol and its many meanings, that concept is increasingly a familiar one for today’s Internet-connected civilization.

[via The New York Times]

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Tags: @, arpanet, art, at, at symbol, design, moma, museum of modern art, new york

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(Via Mashable.)