One person, one word, and two searches: come and find out the results!
Today, we have access to information delivered over the Internet from the most remote parts of the world. We are becoming informed, constructing meaning, and understanding the world based on the results retrieved by search engines. Because of this, I believe it is important to question their objectivity, and to think deeply about how search engines’ algorithms are selecting the results retrieved to us. SEARCH is an interactive installation, which invites the visitor to do an on-line search. Instead of showing its results on the computer screen, two computer monitors start a text-based conversation about their results. The conversation reveals different aspects of how search engines are curating our results, questioning their objectivity, and exposing a phenomenon that is not always visible to us; how their criteria have replaced the physical boundaries with digital boundaries — ones we don’t often recognize; ones we don’t often know exist. SEARCH invites the participant to think from a critical perspective about how this technology influences our lives and its implication in our understanding of today’s world. After interacting with SEARCH, participants are able to reflect and raise their own questions about how search engines work, encouraging them to interpret their results differently, and to develop some counteroffensive strategies in their mode of searching.
