Human Browser
From ActiveArchives
Author: Christophe Bruno
Context: http://www.iterature.com/human-browser/en/
Description
Human Browser is a series of wireless Internet performances based on a Wi-Fi Google hack. Thanks to its headset, the actor hears a text-to-speech audio that comes directly from the Internet in real-time. The actor repeats the text as he hears it. The textual flow is actually fetched by a program (set up on a Wi-Fi laptop) that hijacks Google, diverting it from its utilitarian functions. Depending on the context in which the actor is, keywords are sent to the program and used as search strings in Google (thanks to a Wi-Fi PDA) so that the content of the textual flow is always related to the context. As the world-system reaches its limitations (depletion of natural resources, expected end of low-cost labour, the end of the ideology of liberalism, the fading of desire, etc.), capitalism uses the irony of history to try to relaunch its paradoxical machinery by pushing back its internal limits: freedom of speech is revealed to be the prerequisite for the scientific colonization of intimacy; global terrorism and reality TV feed a spectacle regulated by the panoptical enslavement mechanism of the blogosphere; "Irational Behaviour" that was for long seen as the limit of any economical theory becomes the new field for the externalisation of advertising costs.
Internet, with the advent of global symbolic networked structures of the web 2.0 like Google, has thus become an unrivalled tool for surveillance and control. Its economic dynamics relies on trend analysis and prediction of what you think at any time so as to be able to sell you what will fulfil you: statistically analyzing your least thoughts, acts and desires - not as individuals but as postmodern statistical sets - so as to predict your "Irational Behaviour". In this pact you exchange a promise of happiness against a narrowing of your intimacy. You become predictable, transparent, commonplace even in your wildest dreams...
Human Browser, the perpetual dandy, embodies this "Irational Behaviour".
Bio Artist
Christophe Bruno lives and works in Paris. He began his artistic activity in September 2001. His polymorphic work (installations, performances, conceptual pieces…) has a critical take on network phenomena and globalisation in the field of language and images. He was awarded a prize at the Madrid Contemporary Art Fair with the ARCO new media prize 2007, at the Prix Ars Electronica 2003 and the Piemonte Share Festival in 2007. His work has been shown internationaly:
Jeu de Paume in Paris, ARCO Madrid, FIAC Paris, Diva Fair in New-York, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, ArtCologne, MOCA Taipei, Modern Art Museum of the city of Paris, Biennale of Sydney, New Museum of Contemporary Art in New-York, Tirana Biennale of Contemporary Art, HMKV Dortmund, Gallery West in The Hague, Vooruit Arts Center in Gent, Share Festival in Torino, Transmediale in Berlin, Laboral Cyberspaces in Gijon, galerie Sollertis in Toulouse, ICC in Tokyo, Nuit Blanche de Paris, File Festival in Sao Paulo, Rencontres Paris-Berlin, f.2004@shangai, ReJoyce Festival in Dublin, P0es1s.net in Berlin, Microwave Media Art Festival in Honk-Kong, Read_Me Festival in Dortmund and Aarhus, Vidarte in Mexico City…
He divides his time between his artistic activity, curating, teaching, lectures and publications.
Awards / grants: Winner of the ARCO new media prize 2007, Madrid Winner of the Share Festival 2007, Torino DICREAM (CNC-Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication), aide à la production, 2006 CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques), aide à la première exposition, 2006 DICREAM (CNC-Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication), aide à la maquette, 2004 Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica 2003, Linz
Credits
Concept & programming: Christophe Bruno Actors: Jérôme Piques / Manon Kahle / Beccy Iland / Simona Sagone / Alessandra Lappano
It is based on my former piece Epiphanies (2001), one of the first Google Hacks, inspired by J. Joyce.
