Key+Words

On line installation, 2002

Artistic design: Magali Desbazeille
Sound design: Siegfried Canto
Computer programming: Sébastien Courvoisier

About what you look for when you type a word, what others look for, what can be found. It is about things nobody looks for and about what everybody looks for at the same time… or the keywords of a Search Engine in Real-time.

Description

Key+Words is based on the keywords that net surfers type in the “search” box of search engine “Metacrawler”. The words are taken from a search engine and displayed in real time on the web site, on the 2 screens of the installation.

The key+words project is on and about Internet. Key+Words takes a part of Internet off the screen, and lets visitor experience it and move through it in an actual, physical environment. The project gives a feeling for what Internet users are looking for today.

A semantic work is associated with this phenomenon. Pre-recorded voices are triggered when the most frequent keywords appear (sex, map, free, MP3…). They question the viewer about the identity of Internet surfers, about the net, about the sense and nonsense of the keywords associations, about this ever-changing poetry made visible. An original soundtrack is generated in real time, according to the quantity and type of keyword displayed.

Thanks: S.Courvoisier, Espace ICARE, S.Marinacci, C.Obson, P.Reitlinger, A.Roquiny, E.Van Der Heide
Producers and partners: CICV Pierre Schaeffer, InfoSpace inc., French Ministry of Culture and communication / DICREAM, Transcultures, C3-Center for Culture and Communication, Le Cube, Forum Culturel de Blanc Mesnil, Département de Seine-Saint-Denis, Auvitec, artère.