Human history can be studied (and read) through its Search Engines. A
Search Engine reflects a culture's Zeitgeist. It is an institution and a
mechanism that answer our need to organize, filter and catalog existing
known human knowledge. Every era creates and uses Search Engines–From
the Noah's Ark, through the bookcase, the cabin, the church, the
catalog, the archive, the museum, the encyclopedia, the dictionary, all
the way to the Tele-Vision and the Internet. As the amount of
Information (historic knowledge) grows, so does the need for more
sophisticated mechanisms to dominate it, to act within it, to navigate
it. These mechanisms require an adequate infrastructure upon which a
search is possible. Traditional Search Engines usually do not initiate,
but rather follow technological advances, but they play an important
role in the technological arena since they implement technology and
encourage its development.

The Internet Search Engines phenomena present a new evolutionary stage
in the history of cybernetics (The science Information manipulation,
organization and governance). When we think the Internet as the ultimate
text, the global book, the universal encyclopedia, we perceive that the
engine functions as a master index and as the interface through which we
can navigate information islands.

The Internet Search Engine reflect a post-informational culture: a bit
production era in which bits can be created and sustained anywhere and
anytime. These Engines allow us to reorganize digitized information in
new, unexpected and personal ways.

This means that Engines are capable of expanding our conceptual
reception and acceptance field. Engines allow us to re-map and
reconfigure the info-space through what we can call an art of
cross-reference, an art of hybridization. This capability allows new and
unexpected dimensions to appear. We therefore conclude that a Search
Engine is not just a tool of worldly navigation but it also functions as
a dynamic environment that is built in real time from its user's
navigational browsing paths.

The "Search Engine" physical computing art installation exposes the
digital search engine mechanisms and the practices of its usage by
posing it as a focal subject for observation and research. The art piece
produces a network of realized communication relations which is created
between two custom search engine systems. The engines relate, contain
and criticize each other in a rotational manner. The work deals with the
economics of phrases and their concatenation in an exhibition space that
is turned by the piece into a hybrid environment (part physical part
virtual).

Above all, the "Search Engine" is an interactive installation that deals
with the relation between man and machine in the post-informational era.
Two pedestals are situated in the center of the darkened exhibition
space. Two Personal Computer systems are facing each other, each one on
a different pedestal. Each PC is connected through the telephone system
to the Internet and hosts a custom Internet search engine software that
was developed especially for the installation by its artists. The
computers are involved in an audio and visual dialog. The dialog is
based upon mutual information retrieval requests and upon information
presentation by the computers. Each computer, in its turn, requests the
other one to search the Internet for a certain phrase. The computer that
got the request operates its search engine software and retrieves number
of relevant World Wide Web sites which contain this phrase. The computer
that initiated the request, now chooses one of these sites. The chosen
site appears on the PC monitor and is also projected using
head-projectors on the exhibition space wall. The next round of activity
will be based on one of the projected site's content: The custom
software picks the search phrase from the projected site text. The
requests are performed by voicing English language audio commands, using
Text to Speech technology, speech recognition technology, computer
speakers and microphones. The computers exchange roles and repeat their
dialog ad infinitum. The overall achieved effect is of an ever-changing
colorful Placate, that is made out of graphical Internet web sites,
spoken words and numbers.

The dialog is almost fully autonomic–the computers operate each other
without interactive human assistance. However, the installation audience
is encouraged to interact and to interfere with the installation. It can
affect and divert the displayed sites by intentionally or
unintentionally saying words that are intercepted by the installation
microphones and software. These words can have precedence over the
digitally produced voices. In this aspect, the viewers are turned into
participant computer viruses that affect the "normal," the "planned"
computerized activity.

The work hints on the possibility of using concepts such as Software and
the Internet in physical art installations without forcing the viewer to
operate as a "computer user" (leaning in-front of a monitor, hands tied
to mouse or keyboard) in the gallery space. It exposes the esthetic
dimension of the World Wide Web since it subverts the search operation
and the found pages otherwise "normal" practical usage. "Search Engine"
demonstrates how the Personal Computer tool and the very personal
experience of web browsing can be manipulated to become a group
activity.

"Search Engine" gives precedence to Speech. The act of speaking is the
physical act of communication. The bodily part of language which is
identified with individualism. It is direct, personal and convenient.
The human speaker is allowed to take over the situation–to take the
current installation phrase and to concatenate it. Like in daily human
activity, the word is turned into a "thing" in the world, an action. The
phrase acts inside a field of language systems: an appropriation or
re-appropriation of language through its speakers. It founds a present
relative to a moment and to a place. It poses a contract with the
addressee (be it man or machine). Each phrase leads to the occurrence of
a chain of actions. A spoken word is encoded to a code stream. It
disintegrates to a multitude of appearances, to numerous sites that
contain it. Every phrase turns into a crossing, a place which occupies
space in countless maps, images and networks. A place that reminds us of
the concept of the modern Airport–A crossing from place to place.
Search Engine is the Passport, the Visa that allows you to leave and to
connect into those new other spaces. The Search Engine concept fully
explains the leap from one discourse to another. The leap becomes a part
of the Post-Modern condition.

We hereby call for the establishment of a new branch of the science of
Dromology (Information Ecology)–Searchtology, the study of Search
Engines.