Derivatives > Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI)
The Viennese group of artists UBERMORGEN.COM present the installation Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI). In this piece, Lizvlx and Hans Bernhard take a critical approach to the information monopolies and reflect on the nature of financial bubbles. GWEI is shown to the public as a series of diagrams that reveals the radical way this piece works.
How can Google eat itself? The piece presents a system of economic flow that will lead to this result. By way of a brief explanation, the piece consists of a web site inserted into Google’s advertising system. The money made from the adverts is reinvested in shares in Google. In order to ensure that GWEI made large sums of money, the artists manipulated Google’s system by creating a script to fabricate huge amounts of visits. In this manner, metaphorically Google is financing the purchase of its own shares: it eats itself in an auto-cannibalistic manner. In the same way that amoebas gobble up unicellular micro-organisms until they become part of them, GWEI symbolizes a small parasite attempting to gobble up the company little by little.
The piece was created in 2005 when Google was the centre of attention, on the news and in economic circles, because it was the year the company floated its shares on the stock markets.Its entrance onto the markets was the most eagerly-awaited financial event of the year, and it was not without controversy. Google was the world’s most popular search engine and made the largest impact on the stock markets since the fall of the dotcoms. Some sectors took this as an indication of recovery and of change towards a new and more solid Internet cycle.
GWEI is critical of Google’s advertising based business model. Google receives more than 90 percent of its income from the adverts it places on users web-sites, a product called. In Google’s second revenue stream - a program called Adwords - advertisers hire keywords and. When these words are used in searches, their adverts are inserted, which has given rise to a word market. The art installation deconstructs this advertising mechanism.
GWEI also examines the self-referring dynamics of financial bubbles. Google’s main asset lies in its popularity, due to its possessing the best search engine and the largest Internet database. However, when Google floated on the stock exchange, it received even more exposure, which contributed to increasing its popularity even further. From a financial point of view, therefore, we could say that Google is eating itself. GWEI does not let us ignore this phenomenon.
The installation may be placed alongside other radical works by UBERMORGEN.COM, which is led by Hans Bernhard and Lizvlx. They are joined by Alessandro Ludovico and Paolo Cirio. Bernhard is also the founder of the historic group of net-activists, etoy. Works by UBERMORGEN.COM are often catalysts for controversy. They are notable for conceptual art, software art, net.art and digital activism. Recently, GWEI has been nominated at the Transmediale in 2006, at the Viper Awards, was awarded a Rhizome Commission in 2006 and received the Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in the “net vision” category. Another major venture by the group was [V]ote-auction Project, which provided an analysis of voting systems in democracies by buying and selling votes during the U.S. presidential election 2000.
