Christophe Bruno

Christophe Bruno (born July 1, 1964) is a French artist. He began his artistic activity in 2001, influenced by the net.art movement. His thesis is that through the web, and especially through the ability to search and monitor it thoroughly by means of Google, we are heading towards a global text that among other things enables a new form of textual, semantic capitalism, which he explores in his work. His artworks include Iterature, Logo.Hallucination, The Google Adwords Happening, and many other pieces.

                                                                           Iterature.com

                                                                  http://www.iterature.com/
                                                                  http://www.iterature.com/epiphanies/index.php
                                                                  http://www.iterature.com/bloodforsale/

Iterature, a collection of pieces or documentations of performances which use the text from the web as material. Many of the pieces are search engines hacks (primarily Google). They get hold of text floating around the web and use it as raw material for various re-workings, cut-ups, algorithmic text generations, visualizations, cartographies and so forth.
                                                          
                                                                                  Hapax
                                                                 http://www.iterature.com/hapax/

"Starting on the 14th of December, 2002,  began as a hapax, i.e. a word which appears once and only once in the literature, and by extension, which appears once and only once on the web, considered as a global text. Indeed I carefully checked out on all the search engines that there was no occurence of this word on the web beforehand.


The aim of this piece is to follow, month after month, year after year, the birth and the life of this new signifier which has no signification yet as I write these lines."

I find this to be a very interesting piece of work, taking a word that is only used once, and seeing where it ends up. Something so simple can turn out to mean so much more.

                                                                       
                                                                 Logo.Hallucination
                                                     http://www.logohallucination.com/

Logo.Hallucination deals with the question of privatization of the glance in relation to collective hallucination: an image recognition software based on neural networks, continuously monitors the images circulating on the Web looking for hidden logos, and sends cease & desist mails whenever a copyright violation is detected.

What's interesting about Logo.Hallucination, is the fact that something can be found in almost anything. Some of the corellations on there are easily discernable, and others aren't.


                                                        The Google AdWords Happening
                                                      http://www.iterature.com/adwords/

AdWords Happening plays with the rules of Google's AdWords service by inserting "spam poems" in the ad boxes that appear selectively to the user according to his personal search. Clicking on these links would of course then redirect the user to Bruno's website.


                                                                       Fascinum
                                                     http://www.unbehagen.com/fascinum/
An Internet installation that shows the news pictures that are the most viewed (ranked from 1 to 10) on different national Yahoo portals, in real time. A panoptic vision of the topics of fascination of mankind: the viewer surfs on the infotainment wave and experiences the paradoxes of global thinking in a blink.