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An art project forces people to consider online recommendations in the real world

An art project forces people to consider online recommendations in the real world

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What do online recommendations mean for our decisions in the real world?

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Image: Scott Kelly and Ben Polkinghorne

You’ve seen them on Amazon.com or places like Facebook: “helpful” recommendations for other, similar products, games, or even content that you might like, based on your internet history. According to two artists, the algorithms that make these recommendations rule the internet, and with a new project called Signs of the Times, they aim to get people to think about their impact.

London-based artists Scott Kelly and Ben Polkinghorne installed a series of obtrusive banners in picturesque locations around New Zealand that point to other picturesque locations that vistors might also like, “to make the point about how omnipresent these ads are on the internet.”

Kelly and Polkinghorne told The Verge in an e-mail that there was no particular moment online that sparked the project, but that as internet users, they had begun to notice how prevalent they had become. The pair came up with the project while they back at home in New Zealand for their summer break earlier this year. After working with a sign maker in Auckland, they installed the signs themselves, selecting a variety of public locations around the country.

The pair pointed out that they weren’t trying to make a big, sweeping statement about the role that the internet and its recommendations play in people’s lives, but they did want to call attention to how many of our decisions are essentially made for us. “If the online [world] is making its way more and more into the real world, what does that mean for every other decision in our lives?”

Image: Scott Kelly and Ben Polkinghorne
Image: Scott Kelly and Ben Polkinghorne
Image: Scott Kelly and Ben Polkinghorne