"Painting" Sites

2001

18min

The first in a series of videos investigating the use of digital effects on appropriated imagery, "Painting" Sites compiles pictures arbitrarily yielded by an Internet search for the word "Painting," and peppers the resulting series of images with digital graffiti, courtesy of editing software. When Price began the piece, in 2000, automated image-search tools did not yet exist online; instead, the artist used text-based searches, taking arbitrary screenshots of each and every page that was returned and then cropping out all but the image, an approach that occasionally yielded visual hallmarks like improperly loaded data or the appearance of the cursor.