Counter Googling

From Rhizome Artbase
2003
Description

How the piece works :
This piece is showing portrait and self portrait of people.
The idea is to play with Google and more exactly with the Googling practice.
We can try to identify few consequences of this practice :
- you discover someone without he knows about it
- you know someone even before meet him in real life
- there is difficulty on internet to control your own identity. Someone can publish something about you you are not aware of
- Someone can steal your own identity
- and people can say anything about you even the worts.
- The googling practice is more and more use in human ressources enterprise world
- Some are now using it on marketing practice. For instance hotel try to learn by the googling practice what their client like to do.
And surely, other circonstances that are not yet identified.
There are several objectives to this project.
First, Play with the use people are doing with google by
- create portraits of people I choose
- create imaginary portrait
- Ask people to participate to the project in order for them to own thier internet indentity
The way it's working is : someone is looking on Google who is Nicolas Bourriaud (he in the real world the curator of Palais de Tokyo in Paris). He has is portrait on counter googling, so the searcher guy will be tempted to click on the "Who is Nicolas Bourriaud" / Qui est Nicolas Bourriaud" listed in the google results.
So, a portrait on counter googling web site will play with the search mechanism by proposing true/false portrait and self portrait.

The second objective is to push beyond this practice, and this logic of non owning your identity on internet by creating this portrait and selft portrait under Free Art Licence.
With the Free Art License, anybody is authorised to copy, distribute and freely transform this work of art while respecting the rights of the originator. So portrait and selfportrait can be modified, transformed ...
The invitation to participate is this way :
Have you ever been googled without knowing it ? Surely, because you are someone people are interested in!
But the true question is have you got a good Googling ? Excellent, terrific, bad, too bad ?
With Counter-googling.net, by saying true or false things on yourself, you can increase your googling by 1
For instance, have a look to the Richard Stallman self portrait http://www.counter-googling.net/stallman.htm
Join. Send me a picture or a sound or a video with your first and last name or internet pseudo and a text to describe yourself the way you want.
If conditions are fulfilled, your self portrait will be published on the http://counter-googling.net web site.
Nota bene : Content will be published under under Free Art licence (http://artlibre.org/licence.php/lalgb.html).
With the Free Art License, you are authorised to copy, distribute and freely transform this work of art while respecting the rights of the originator.

catherine ramus
19 February 2004
Metadata
Variant History
outside link
8 May 2013
2003
catherine ramus