Google Adwords Happenings

Christophe Bruno

Google Adwords Happenings ,
Co-workers & Funding
Ars Electronica Prix Honorory 2003
Documents
  • bruno adwords
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Description
The Google Adwords Happening: how a global happening on Google unveiled the Generalized Semantic Capitalism.

“At the beginning of April, a debate took place on rhizome.org mailing list, about how to earn money with net art. It suggested to me an answer to an easier problem : how to spend money with my art (if you understand everything on how to spend money, you should in principle understand also how to earn money, because of conservation laws…). I decided to launch a happening on the web, consisting in a poetry advertisement campaign on Google AdWords . I opened an account for $5 and began to buy some keywords. For each keyword you can write a little ad and, instead of the usual ad, I decided to write little “poems”, non-sensical or funny or a bit provocative. I began with the keyword “symptom”…”

Exhibitions:
2006: Galerie Sollertis
2005: Piemonte Share Festival, Torino
2005: ARTE-RED
2005: Arts meets Media, ICC Communication Center, Tokyo
2004: FILE - Electronic Language International Festival, Sao Paulo
2004: En Parallèle, Modern Art Museum of the City of Paris
2004: Third Nuit Blanche of Paris
2003: Tirana Biennale of Contemporary Art
2003: Ars Electronica - Honorary mention (Net vision / net excellence)
2002 : Microwave International Media Art Festival, Honk Kong
2002: Freemanifesta.org
Keywords
  • genres
    • digital activism
    • installations
      • virtual reality (VR)
  • subjects
    • Art and Science
      • combinatorics
    • Arts and Visual Culture
      • poetry
    • Media and Communication
      • commerce
      • search engines
    • Power and Politics
      • manipulation
      • surveillance
    • Society and Culture
      • communities
    • Technology and Innovation
      • invention
  • technology
    • interfaces
Technology & Material
Software
Date: 1995 - 2005
Location: North America , Central America and the Caribbean
Subject: Political/Economic/Social Opinion
Medium: Electronic Media , Commercial Advertising , Literature
Artist: Christophe Bruno
Confronting Bodies: Christophe Bruno / Google
Date of Action: April 2002
Specific Location: http://www.iterature.com/adwords
Description of Artwork: In April 2002, Christophe Bruno launched a serie of large scale poetry happenings on the Internet using Google Adwords. 12000 persons saw his poems in 24 hours.
Description of Incident: After 24 hours, the happening was censored by Google. The censorship occured for economical reasons related to the global equilibrium of the market economy of words on Google
Bibliography