This project experiments with the ever-present mechanical "eye" of search engines. A simple code has been added to Marialaura Ghidini's editorial which allows Google to "read" and interpret the contents of that text, and to reflect that interpretation back to the human reader in the form of targeted advertising. This advertising, in its frequent failure to accurately predict the desires of the human readers, betrays the current state of Google's algorithmic understanding of the text's meaning (and of the human mind). As the advertising changes over the course of this program, it reflects the algorithm's attempts to learn.

There is also a parallel component to the project in the form of ads purchased from Google in order to direct web traffic to this site. Over the course of this program I will be attempting to create a self-sustaining feedback loop in which the advertising on the site funds the advertising to the site, and each in turn allow Google to interpret the meaning of the text (and the desires of its readers) with greater and greater accuracy. In this way the piece is at once an intervention and a performance, as a collaborative text is formed between Marialaura's words, Google's words, and my own.

http://www.google.com/search?q=onlooking

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PROJECT PROGRESS UPDATES:

WEEK 3

Ads to the site:

Clicks to the site Ads on the site

Advertising on the site:

Earnings Suggested terms

or-bits Onlooking

WEEK 12

Ads to the site:

or-bits Onlooking or-bits Onlooking

Advertising on the site:

or-bits Onlooking or-bits Onlooking

or-bits Onlooking or-bits Onlooking

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