The googlepoweredgogglebox is a tool made by Sam Woolf using Macromedia's Director software to explore the idea of generative film-making. The idea of generative or process art has been around for at least as long as Brian Eno and most probably for a good while longer. It has (some of) its roots in the experimental music movement of the 1960's and the work of avant-garde composers such as John Cage and Steve Reich, and in the work of artists associated with the Fluxus movement, such as Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik. More

Google Groups Art (sometimes called "Google Art") is a hack that uses/abuses the fact that Google Groups color-highlights searchterm queries within Usenet posts it displays. The result is that color images are generated within the Google Groups (Usenet) posts themselves. Google Art first surfaced in summer 2002.

When making Google Art, you post to Usenet entirely in plain ASCII text, replacing intended blocks of color with the ASCII characters of your choice. You then indicate within your post the search queries (and their order) for which users should search Google in order to see the post appear in the proper colors. (This will probably make more sense once you look at the examples below.)

The software download link presented here will take you to a utility created by Stuart Langridge that lets you automatically generate ASCII text for your own Google Art post. However, the software art project of primary interest to this submitter is the Google Art hack itself. More