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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Money Plus
Peter Cho
Original: PR_2004_moneyplus_002_o.jpg | 3000 * 1880px | 1.1 MB
Original: PR_2004_moneyplus_001_o.jpg | 2518 * 2275px | 1.0 MB
Money Plus is a software-based art work which looks for “money” on the Internet by querying the Google search engine in real time. Users can add another term to their search for money, for example, “money and the meaning of life.”
These searches appear instantaneously in the reimagined “web space” of the piece. This piece recontextualizes a simple web search as a dynamic, typographic space. Money Plus deals with spatialization and interpretation of information from the network. By looking at the Internet through a narrow filter, the piece creates often surprising narrative threads. The piece culls the far-reaching, sometimes emotionally-charged, and often irreverent references to themes of money, wealth, and power by the Internet collective.
I am interested in the mapping of information spaces. If Borges’ fable of the one-to-one sized map of an imaginary kingdom has become true in the age of the Internet, the role of the map as an all-encompassing tool for representing the entirety of a region needs to change. We need new kinds of maps to make sense of the data overload, maps which narrativize and personalize the journey.
Money Plus represents one technique for guiding a viewer along a subjective path through the digital information space. I am also interested in the performative and social aspects of a work. When Money Plus is presented as an installation piece, it requires viewers to submit their queries to the system. Seen as a group effort, the query terms could be considered to represent the collective psyche of the visitors. The interaction could be thought of as a collaborative way-finding experiment.
Links: http://www.design.ucla.edu/~petercho/projects.php?id=1
These searches appear instantaneously in the reimagined “web space” of the piece. This piece recontextualizes a simple web search as a dynamic, typographic space. Money Plus deals with spatialization and interpretation of information from the network. By looking at the Internet through a narrow filter, the piece creates often surprising narrative threads. The piece culls the far-reaching, sometimes emotionally-charged, and often irreverent references to themes of money, wealth, and power by the Internet collective.
I am interested in the mapping of information spaces. If Borges’ fable of the one-to-one sized map of an imaginary kingdom has become true in the age of the Internet, the role of the map as an all-encompassing tool for representing the entirety of a region needs to change. We need new kinds of maps to make sense of the data overload, maps which narrativize and personalize the journey.
Money Plus represents one technique for guiding a viewer along a subjective path through the digital information space. I am also interested in the performative and social aspects of a work. When Money Plus is presented as an installation piece, it requires viewers to submit their queries to the system. Seen as a group effort, the query terms could be considered to represent the collective psyche of the visitors. The interaction could be thought of as a collaborative way-finding experiment.
Links: http://www.design.ucla.edu/~petercho/projects.php?id=1
Peter Cho (USA) is a designer and media artist based in Los Angeles. Recent design projects include exhibit design for the Asia Society Museum in New York City and motion and interactive branding pieces for IBM and Ford Motor Company. Cho holds a Master of Science degree in Media Arts and Sciences and a Bachelor of Science in engineering from MIT. At the MIT Media Lab, Cho’s design research explored the possibilities for interactive and temporal typographic forms. His work has been shown at galleries and festivals around the world. He is currently a MFA candidate in the Design|Media Arts department at UCLA.