Go ahead and do a Google image search—try something like rainbows or Kim Kardashian. Only don’t type it into Google’s standard search bar. Type it here. Then watch as your brain tries to process the visual assault that’s occurring on screen.
This browser art piece, called Located Graphics, is the work of Adam Ferriss, an artist best known for bending code into glitched out pixel paintings. For Located Graphics, Ferris decided to build a tool that would allow us to visualize Google’s bank of images in a completely new way.
The premise is simple: You enter a word or phrase into the search bar and Ferriss’ tool will grab the first 30 images that come up. The images layered on top of each other in quick succession, kind of like making a paper collage, only digital and infinitely looping. As new images are saved on top of the older, the screen evolves (or, more accurately, devolves) into an increasingly unrecognizable blur.
It’s a visual piece, but the most illuminating aspect of Ferriss’ work is often what’s happening behind the scenes. Click here and you’ll be taken to a running log of queries that show all of the phrases searched and where they came from. You’ll see “YOLO,” “naked women,” “livestock,” and plenty of what we can assume to be selfie-searches. Not terribly surprising, but then again, what did you expect? “I think it’s pretty representative of the internet,” he says.
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