bigQuestions.com is a data-mining and database project in two parts:
1. A search function: it searches web sites and library catalogues for words which signify the"big" questions of philosophy, religion, and science. It stores the words and their contexts in a searchable database, which now consists of approximately 65,000 library and 45,000 web entries. Visitors to the site can then search the database for terms other than the big terms and get some idea how these terms are used and contextualized in our culture.
2. A code function: It gives visitors to the site a chance to watch in real time as the data-mining software does its searches, showing both the raw accumulation of data and the code itself in action.
Both of these functions model relations between internal and external processes and experience. The Search sets the viewer's understandings against those of the world in which the viewer lives, while the code enables the viewer to enter into the inner processes which produce the visible data. There is a formal beauty in the shape and movement of the code, and therefore like any aesthetic object it plays to our inner experience.