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Lovelines is an exploration of human desire. Through large scale blog analysis, Lovelines illuminates the topography of the emotional landscape between love and hate, as experienced by countless normal humans keeping personal online journals. Using a data collection engine created by the artists for their recent collaboration, We Feel Fine ( www.wefeelfine.org ), Lovelines examines thousands of blogs every few minutes to find expressions of love and hate, posted by all manner of people. When it can, Lovelines identifies and saves the age, gender, and geographical location of the person who wrote the post, and then presents that information along with the post. The entries range from frivolous to profound, offering a glimpse into the hearts and minds of people blogging about their wants and needs. Lovelines presents a stark white screen, bounded on the bottom by a slider running from “Love” to “Hate”, with a draggable heart that becomes scratched out to the point of illegibility as the heart approaches “Hate”. As the slider is pulled through Love, Like, Want, Indifference, Dislike, and Hate, words and pictures appear above to represent the chosen state of desire or despair. Lovelines is structured around three movements: “Words”, “Pictures”, and “Superlatives”. Words and Pictures iteratively present individual examples of human desire, while Superlatives provides a daily zeitgeist of the most loved, wanted, liked, and hated things. Interactive timelines represent the changing magnitude of love and hate over time, and allow navigation into the past. The artists were invited to make this piece by Oral Fixation Mints ( www.oralfix.com ), a breath mint company devoted to “making everyday objects beautiful”, of which Jonathan Harris is a co-founder. We realize that the heart of all fixations is the desire to own, possess, and consume. Great desires imitate the physics of giant pendulums: the higher they rise, the deeper they fall. In this sense, love is inextricably tied to hate, desire to despair. Lovelines walks the line between these two extremes, painting pictures of the shifting landscape of desire. Constructed entirely from found artifacts – words and pictures posted to blogs – Lovelines draws its identity from a world of strangers, brought together by shared degrees of desire. - Jonathan
Harris & Sep
Kamvar, May 2006 About The Artists
Jonathan Harris Jonathan Harris is an artist working primarily on the Internet. His work involves the exploration of humans through the artifacts they leave behind on the Web. He was awarded a 2004 Fabrica Fellowship ( www.fabrica.it ), and is the creator of such projects as 10x10 ( www.tenbyten.org ), WordCount ( www.wordcount.org ), Phylotaxis ( www.phylotaxis.com ), justcurio.us ( www.justcurio.us ), and We Feel Fine ( www.wefeelfine.org ). He studied Computer Science at Princeton University, where his thesis was a system that automatically gathers and clusters similar news articles from a large number of online sources. The winner of two 2005 Webby Awards, his work has also been recognized by AIGA, Ars Electronica, ID Magazine, Yahoo!, and the State of Vermont, and has been featured by CNN, BBC, Reuters, USA Today, The Guardian, New York Magazine, and Wired. He has lectured about his work at Princeton and Stanford Universities, Parson's School of Design, and at Google. Originally from Shelburne Vermont, he currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, and does not have a blog. More of his work can be seen at www.number27.org
Sep Kamvar Sep Kamvar's current interests lie in search, data mining, and street art. He founded Kaltix, a search engine that was acquired by Google in 2003, and Distilled ( www.distilledspirit.com ), a clothing line and artist collective based out of San Francisco. He is also the co-creator of We Feel Fine ( www.wefeelfine.org ). He hasn't won any awards, but his mom thinks he's handsome. More of his work can be seen at www.stanford.edu/~sdkamvar
About Oral Fixation Mints Founded in 2003 by three college friends, Oral Fixation Mints makes gourmet breath mints in ten delicious flavors, and packages them in minimalist brushed metal tins, reminiscent of 1920s cigarette cases. Oral Fixation's driving principle is to make everyday objects beautiful. As a strong supporter of emerging artists, Oral Fixation has produced such venues as The Gallery, which celebrates outstanding young talent. Jonathan Harris, one of the creators of Lovelines, is the designer behind Oral Fixation Mints. Never tried Oral Fixation Mints? Try a 6Pack or BYOB.
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