If you adehere to the interpretative perspective,
that includes the context as well as the interpreteur as parts of the
communication process, it doesn't. Thus the randomic association
between images and words generated by a machine does make sense. This
is the concept that hides behind the Ad Generator, a generative artwork
that explores how advertising uses and manipulates language, created by
Alexis Lloyd as part of her thesis project at Parsons The New School
for Design. Alexis Loyd is an interactive designer, information
architect, and new media artist whose work includes interaction design,
social networking software, and data-driven multimedia art. The Ad Generator
shows her interest in the ways in which collections and databases can
reveal patterns of meaning, and in creating tools that allow people to
interact with information and each other in innovative ways. In this
artwork, in fact, words and semantic structures from real corporate
slogans are remixed and randomized to generate invented slogans. These
slogans are then paired with related images from Flickr, according to
their tags, thereby generating fake advertisements on the fly. The aim
of the project is to show how the language of advertising is both
deeply meaningful and meningless: on the one hand, in fact, it
represents real cultural values and desires, while on the other these
ideas have no relationship to the products being sold. Unlike some
generators, this one requires no inputs from the user, although if
you'd like to capture the images, you have to be somewhat quick:
there's no way to "stop" the ads from being generated every 3 seconds
or so, a feature that is just as well annoying as the landscape of
advertising itself. Watching this nevereneding sequence of ads it's
natural asking how long it will take before real advertising creative
is done by algorithm? Based on the quality of some of the results, this
practise could be in act right now.

Valentina Culatti