View the orginal Text Trends animation online
Text Trends has also been commissioned as a series of prints, a book and a series of newspapers.
Text Trends has also been commissioned as a series of prints, a book and a series of newspapers.
Text Trends deals with the spectacularization of information. Using Google data it explores the vast search data of its users. The animation takes the content generated by search queries and reduces this process to its essential elements: search terms vs. frequency searched for over time, presented in the form of a line graph
The viewer watches the animation plot out the ebb and flow of a series of search terms generated over the last four years by internet users around the world. Pairs of words such as ‘now and later’, ‘summer and winter’ play out matter-of-factly, with all the passion of a market index. Instead of the hyper-interactivity of emerging news aggregators and information readers, Text Trends explores our perception of words though topics like time and politics. The work is an investigation into data use, encouraging criticism on how the data is generated; prompting the question what does the data actually represent?
The viewer watches the animation plot out the ebb and flow of a series of search terms generated over the last four years by internet users around the world. Pairs of words such as ‘now and later’, ‘summer and winter’ play out matter-of-factly, with all the passion of a market index. Instead of the hyper-interactivity of emerging news aggregators and information readers, Text Trends explores our perception of words though topics like time and politics. The work is an investigation into data use, encouraging criticism on how the data is generated; prompting the question what does the data actually represent?
Prints are held in: Strang Print Room UCL, City of Hull, and Hull LIFT NHS Primary Care Trust.
Limited book published by Merkske, 2011
Limited book published by Merkske, 2011
Notes on Text Trends
- Data as Culture: Open Day 16 March
- Text Trends newspaper: Environmental
- BYO Lunchtime Lectures at ODI: Data as Culture
- Text Trends newspaper series for the launch of The Open Data Institute
- Merkske at London Art Book Fair, Whitchapel Gallery, 21–23 September 2012
- books at London Open, Whitechapel Gallery
- Global, Casal Solleric, press archive
- Global, Casal Solleric
- Text Trends book out now with Merkske
- We Dream in Database
- Human Nature
- Data Soliloquies
- Text Trends – Rhizome ArtBase
- Text Trends – Infosthetics
- Text Trends
- more notes...