2011-07-27
post/8116432692
The work of art in the age of Googled reproduction:
I don’t want to call these digital objects “image economies,” I want to call them something like Google Clusters. Or maybe Pergoogles: These are iconic images — per Google.
Even that is a bit of a cheat, because obviously Google is responding to the specific words I choose. (The title of each image here corresponds with the search term I used; I didn’t use quote marks in my searches.) It’s easy to capture “Mona Lisa,” harder to see what Google makes of Warhol’s iconic soup can, or Michelangelo’s David (see below).
Nevertheless, I’m rather pleased with the results, all in all.
I’d love to see all these printed crisply, and very large, and displayed in a high-ceilinged and white-walled gallery. Or museum. After all, I think a case could be made for these as “digital readymades,” a term whose origins I don’t know, but that I’ve read applied to the“Photoshop Gradient” pieces by Cory Arcangel. Those are supposedly one-click affairs, and the ones I’ve seen I quite like. (Though I’ve only seen them online.)
(via krislane)
