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theBot (one infesting the horse) is a time-based project using a web bot, similar to
those used by search engines, to follow links between web pages. In doing so, theBot explores
the narrative of the web (or at least the stream-of-consciousness of a web bot.) It also
takes note of the parasitic relationship of the ever-present web robots to their "hosts" - the web
content... or is that the other way around? Search engines have increasingly become the doors
through which we enter the web; the paths of its robots often become our paths. These paths are
sometimes presented in art and science projects graphically - as spidery, often visually
spectacular maps. However, the content of paths is not usually explicitly revealed. What types
of content do web robots - and presumably users - gravitate to? To what types of content do
most links lead?
You can think of theBot as, in some ways, a deconstruction of the web via a search engine and robot: it takes the process through which search engines index web content, reverses it, and shows us what the search engines don't: the resulting path through the web as a stream of visual and speaking text "packets." User interactivity is limited to input of the searchterm; theBot takes control of the browsing. This lack of interactivity is intentional: content-providers generally spoon-feed us paths through the internet while giving us the illusion of choice. In theBot, there is obviously no choice - you listen to theBot entertain itself, and to listen to the web as linear content. On starting theBot, the visitor inputs a search term, which theBot dutifully looks up in a major commercial search engine. After selecting a page from the search results, theBot reads a piece of text from the page, and then begins following links from page to page. As theBot reads an excerpt from each page, the excerpt's text animates across the screen, mimicking the flow of network packets. Meanwhile, theBot's voice reads both the URLs and the text aloud - layered, often repeating itself, and with varying degrees of interest and boredom. (Web bots tend to be obsessive-compulsive by nature.) A listing of visited URLs begins to catalog along the side of the screen, incrementing with each URL visited. The result is a slice of the structure of the web, from the point-of-view of content flow. The tendencies of the web's narrative begin to be revealed. Not surprisingly, the web can often be found talking about... the web. |