Google launched in 1998, accelerating the integration of the internet into all corners of everyday life. The ability to search for anything instantly has profoundly changed the way we navigate the world and share information. The results that turn up are constantly in flux, evolving in response to changes in the algorithms that organize, store, rank, and circulate vast webs of data.
Artists have responded to these new tools and the ways in which they shape our realities, histories, and individual identities. Some appropriate existing images and texts—a practice that goes back more than a century—to raise questions about what it means to use found material when seemingly endless amounts of information can be digitally sourced swiftly. Others turn to slowed-down, artisanal, or seemingly outmoded methods—strategies that contrast with the speed and fluidity of digital culture—to reflect on the transformations wrought by our all-encompassing embrace of technology.
Organized by Lanka Tattersall, Laurenz Foundation Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, with Gee Wesley, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance, Lydia Mullin, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, and Dana Ostrander, former Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography.
