Title |
American Psycho |
Author |
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Date |
2011 |
Description |
This book was made by sending the entire text of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho between two GMail accounts page by page. The artists saved the relational ads for each page and added them back into the text as footnotes. In total, they collected over 800 relevant ads for the book. The constellations of footnoted ads throughout these pages retell the story of American Psycho in absence of the original text. |
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Statement |
This retelling reveals GMail's unpredictable insensitivity to violence, racism, and sex. It serves as a blurry portrait of an algorithm that exists in our everyday communication simultaneously forming a new portrait of the lead character, Patrick Bateman. We were most curious how Google would handle the violence, racism and graphic language in American Psycho. In some instances the ads related to the content of the email, in others they were completely irrelevant, either out of time or out of place. In one scene, where first a dog and then a man are brutally murdered with a knife, Google supplied ample ads regarding knives and knife sharpeners. In another scene the ads disappeared altogether when the narrator makes a racial slur. Google's choice and use of standard ads unrelated to the content next to which they appeared offered an alternate window into how Google ads function — the ad for Crest Whitestrips Coupons appeared the highest number of times, next to both the most graphic and the most mundane sections of the book, leaving no clear logic as to how it was selected to appear. This "misreading" ultimately echoes the hollowness at the center of advertising and consumer culture, a theme explored in excess in American Psycho. — Mimi Cabell |
URL |
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Medium |
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Size |
15,24 x 22,86 cm |
Pages |
416 |
Publisher |
Traumawien |
Edition |
Print on Demand |
Buy |
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Price |
25€ |
Platform |
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Download |
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Source Materials |
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, 1991. |
Related Article |
“Download American Psycho reimagined using Google ads” by Thomas Gorton, Dazed Digital, 5th September 2014. |
Event |
Erreur d’impression. Publier à l’ère du numérique at Jeu de Paume, Paris. 2012. URL: espacevirtuel.jeudepaume.org/american-psycho-1901 |
Keywords |
algorithm, appropriation, authorship, context, distribution, erasure, language, mediation, process, reading, writing |
Added |
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ID |
1692 |