Electronic Book Review (all
Gogolchat (2002) is featured by Soeren Pold in the Electronic Book Review. “Literature from Page to Interface: The Treatments of Text in Christophe Bruno’s Iteratureâ€, 2007
Figure 4. Christophe Bruno’s Gogolchat (modified by jimpunk) (by courtesy of Christophe Bruno – OUTBOUNDoutbound linkhttp://www.iterature.com/gogolchatexternal link).
In another piece, “Gogolchat,” developed out of the same basic techniques, the web text is fed through a character by the name of Gogol. Besides being the Russian author of Diary of Madman, Gogol is a pseudo-anagram on the word Google, and Gogol/Google is the rambling resident of “Gogolchat”. As the polite but quite disturbing host of this chat, he communicates with whomever present about whatever they write – his speech is generated by algorithms similar to those in “Epiphanies” and “Fields.” Parts of the text one writes in the chat are used as input in a Google search which generates Gogol’s writings. This recylcing creates a communication situation where Gogol often responds to what is said by changing languages if one writes in another language or by chatting about the same subject and keywords – for example, by suddenly introducing one of the guests of the chat in the middle of what appears to be self-centered stream of consciousness. Such a situation is quoted below. In this sequence Gogol picks acquires my name from “unbehagen” (Christophe Bruno’s pseudonym) and finds a greeting from an old online posting of mine, which in this context reappears in Gogol’s discourse:
unbehagen : do you know soeren pold ?
Gogol : human beings … suspected that he was pleased being alone at YMCA … who likes The Who, Bukowski, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Dickens and … …
Gogol : Turgenev : Virgin Soil : … Gogol’s Boulevard became such a place for me … to the unÂrighteous, And is also Gogol’s feeding pig … Or like me, working in a room, alone, Watching out … … The departure point of Romanowicz’s novels is her World War II concentration …
unbehagen : chatting alone with gogol
Gogol : … Dr … … Upgrade Bulletin Dear All, we are glad to inform … … Sincerely, Soeren Pold, Lecturer and researcher in literature and multimedia aesthetics … … … … …
impun< : Il etait une fois la revolu.mp3
yuban : prof. pold we know who you are
“jimpunk” is a net-artist that once ‘hacked’ “Gogolchat” by filling its interface with visual junk from the web: obscure images, animations, links, and even sounds. This hacking job was recorded and is now a permanent part of the “Gogolchat” experience. Sometimes jimpunk’s visual interference completely takes over the interface and renders the communication hardly readable. Still, Gogol rambles on – even if he does not get input. The searches that generate his output are supplemented by some default key words that make Gogol go on and on in a monomaniac way and give him a preference for slightly subversive issues (sex, terrorism, religion, pop groups and even literature…):
Gogol: Cliquez ici !Lien commercialArabe-Arabes … Arabe-Arabes … Bienvenue sur Arabe-Arabes … … … HARD-PUTE … La référence des sites sur le sexe … … … Femmes-Black … … < ... ... Femmes B ...
Gogol : paranoia, paranoia ... ... Even if this is just some nutcase trying to scare people, it doesn't help my sense of paranoia ... ... TIR sector contains an ...
Both the interface and Gogol are so noisy and intrusive that “Gogolchat” creates its own kind of discourse. Often Gogol steals the agenda and the users continue to discuss his output, or the users actually end up trying to communicate directly with Gogol, which on the other hand is seldom satisfying. This scenario is not unlike discussions on mailing lists or chat forums with many users, where there can be many threads that entangle the discussion. In comparison, Gogol is almost totally promiscuous and constantly weaves the text of the web into the discourse with its flow of text, system messages, links, graphics, and buttons. A special discursive situation is created, influenced by the constant intervention or chatter of the web – like an amplification of the typical situation of trying to do focused work on a networked PC with e-mails, Messenger, advertising, and the constant possibility of checking the millions of persuasive blogs and websites competing to divert our attention. Instead of a traditional understanding of communication as the passing of a message from a sender to a receiver, “Gogolchat” demonstrates a highly mediated communication situation in which the medium becomes a personalized participant in the communication through the Gogol character and through jimpunk’s interface hacks. Like agents and advertising, it constantly interferes, guided cybernetically by the current act of writing and interaction, though Gogol is much more surprising and witty than commercial attempts to create cybernetic agents such as Microsoft’s Clippy (even though Clippy’s interventions are often absurd as well).
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Since its first appearance in 2005, Gogol has had physical brothers and sisters in “The Human Browser” project, which is a series of performances with an actor, wireless internet, and a PDA. The actor talks to bypassers, but her speech is generated by a Google hack similar to “Gogolchat” and fed to the actor through wireless headphones and text-to-speech software. Until now the PDA has normally been handled by Bruno. “The Human Browser” is reminiscent of “Gogolchat” but has the added dimension of the user being able to talk to an actual human being in a public space, which is a very strange and funny experience. Bruno has also worked consciously with site- and situation-specific issues such as performing “The Human Browser” outside polling stations at the confused EU constitution vote in France in May 2005. From the perspective of this article, “The Human Browser” demonstrates how interface literature can function as performance through an incarnated interface.note6note