[spectre] Turbulence Commission: "Google Variations" by Leonardo Solaas

[Turbulence]

December 15, 2010
Turbulence Commission: "Google Variations" by Leonardo Solaas
http://turbulence.org/works/google

Google is the main hub of an emerging data-driven world. It is a  
beast with many faces, impossible to grasp all at once and growing  
new limbs every day. It is also the name of many contradictions: a  
centralized traffic control in the (supposedly) horizontal and  
distributed Internet; a supporter of data openness and accessibility  
that relies on secret algorithms; and a ranking technology that is  
based on finding out popularity while it simultaneously determines  
it. "Google Variations" is a series of approximations of some of  
these diverse aspects of Google. It is a collection of formal and  
conceptual micro-experiments, a fly-eyed view of an entity so  
pervasive that it tends to be invisible while it radically changes  
our lives. "Google Variations" employs multiple strategies to de- 
naturalize our relationship with the brand, the corporation and the  
technology.

"Google Variations" is a 2010 commission of New Radio and Performing  
Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website. It was made possible with  
funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

[PLEASE SUPPORT THE TURBULENCE COMMISSIONS PROGRAM. See http:// 
turbulence.org for details.]

BIOGRAPHY

LEONARDO SOLAAS studied Philosophy at the Universidad de Buenos  
Aires, and is a self-taught programmer, designer and new media  
artist. Among other distinctions, he was awarded the IBM Media Art  
Award 2006 at the 19th Stuttgarter Filmwinter for Dreamlines and the  
Premio Mamba - Fundación Telefónica 2005, in Buenos Aires, Argentina  
for Intimidad. He was also commissioned by the Readme 100 Software  
Art Festival in 2005 to develop the project Outsource Me!, under the  
guidance of Alexei Shulgin and Olga Goriunova. He has taken part in  
numerous exhibitions, including International Media Art Award  
(Karlsruhe, Alemania, 2005), 5ta Bienal del Mercosur (Porto Alegre,  
Brasil, 2005), Transmediale 06 (Berlín, Alemania, 2006), OFFF  
International Festival (Barcelona, España, 2006), Impakt Festival  
(Utrecht, Holanda, 2006), Interface & Society (Oslo, Noruga, 2006),  
Designmai 07 (Berlin, Germany, 2007), and FILE 2008 (Porto Alegre,  
Brasil, and Rio do Janeiro, Brasil). Solaas lives in Argentina.

Jo-Anne Green
Co-Director
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.
917.548.7780 or 617.522.3856
Turbulence: http://turbulence.org
Networked_Performance: http://turbulence.org/blog
Networked_Music_Review: http://turbulence.org/networked_music_review
Networked: http://networkedbook.org
New American Radio: http://somewhere.org
Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade_boston

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://post.in-mind.de/pipermail/spectre/attachments/20101215/8d089895/attachment.htm