Sometimes, as you're walking through a crowded street, or as you brush by people, you catch a glimpse of the conversations they're having - a few words, a single sentence at most. Whenever this happens, I can't help but extrapolate the rest of the conversation, the subject, what the people in it are like. It seems like I'm not the only one, as two Dutch film makers have used the accidentally leaked search query records of 2006 as inspiration for a series of short films. Tantalising voyeurism.
Post a Comment
Member since:
2005-06-29
Apart from the Dutch filmmakers I don't think anyone's really that interested in you to go about "filling the blanks". Not you, Thom, but generally.
You gotta give it to the Dutch though for being pioneers in modern art that reinvents itself and pushes the borders. Kesselskramer comes to mind. If you haven't visited their website I urge you to go and have a look.
Member since:
2007-11-06
Member since:
2005-08-18
Ok, this would have been much more interesting (and less mind-numbingly boring) if the pacing was better. Looking at a dull view of alaske while hearing random snippets spoken by woman isn't exactly exciting. I'm sure you can fill in the blanks and get an interesting picture but to do that you'd have to watch 13 dull uneventful views of Alaska (ok, they're pretty impressive vistas but they get old pretty quicky in this context) and listen to that flat, unemotional voice.
Edited 2009-01-28 15:35 UTC
Member since:2006-02-23
I disagree completely. I watched the first 4 episodes and found the pacing to be just right. You need some time to take it all in and the tempo adds to the whole atmosphere of the film. There is no emotion in the voice because search queries as such do not carry any emotion (at least none that we know of, we do not know anything about this woman). The whole point of this is to let the viewer fill in the blanks and this experience would have been tainted if the director had chosen to add emotion and thus his interpretation to the voiced queries. The empty views of the landscapes add to the experience in my view. I thought the clips contained an extreme sense of loneliness, but there were parts where I was laughing out loud too. I really enjoyed it.
Member since:
2006-01-28
The dull monotone only adds to the bizarre sense of the puzzle pieces forming whatever imagery the listener concocts in his head about what he just heard. The primary reason that this narrative technique works is because we know these were real queries.
This makes you think about the kind of fun jokes that must be told in the googleplex as admins get to see some of the google searches of sufficiently unique users, i.e., those that don't delete their cookies often enough.
Sometimes, ignorance is truly a bliss.Would you really want to know the google searches of your next door neighbor?
Thanks for posting this.
Member since:
2005-06-29
I just watched the first episode (previously posting from a phone) and strangely that's precisely what the movie's about - how insignificant and yet somehow significant we are, just small specks in an endless universe typing bits of text stuck with our special inconsequential problems...
It's easy to imagine how it's tough to watch for some people though, the scene doesn't change, but that's a metaphor for how things really don't change regardless of what you generally do. Very poignant.
Member since:
2005-11-11
Hah I was wondering if it was user 711391 (then I clicked "read more").
I read through that entire log back when all this was hitting the fan (thanks to Somethingawful.com highlighting it*). It's incredibly long and sad, a modern tragedy. Maybe if I was an English major I'd have something more intelligent sounding to say about it, like this guy did: http://rhetoricaldevice.com/SearchLogNarrative.html .
I can't find the complete thing anywhere, all those sites that let you browse search results by userid seem to have withered up. I guess it's about time. Just in time for the film!
* http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/aol-search-log.php?page...
