Author: Pip Thornton

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Back for the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe! NEWSPEAK & {poem}.py at the Scottish Storytelling Centre – what are #wordsworth ?

The original iteration of Newspeak visualised the words of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as if they were commodities on a stock exchange. Using live data scraped from Google Ads, the text of the book scrolls across the screen as ticker-tape. The fluctuating prices of the words are determined by what they are worth to Google in the context of an advert. The project is a political … Continue reading Back for the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe! NEWSPEAK & {poem}.py at the Scottish Storytelling Centre – what are #wordsworth ?

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Data as Culture | Data as Politics: Creativity and curation in a post-digital world

I’ve been let loose to curate the first Creative Informatics Lab since lockdown (17th Sept 2020 – sign up here). These last few months have been really difficult and have thrown many of my plans and commitments into freefall. I’m only now beginning to get back some kind of grip on actioning future projects. I will catch up with pre-pandemic projects asap, but in the … Continue reading Data as Culture | Data as Politics: Creativity and curation in a post-digital world

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Critique in a time of crisis

I had exciting things planned for this year; events and exhibitions in America, Ireland, Rotterdam, Cardiff, London, Dundee, Germany and even a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. There was much to look forward to, but then came that week back in early March when things began to fall apart, and the volume of cancellation emails became almost unbearable. I know I’m not alone in this, … Continue reading Critique in a time of crisis

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Arcadia (2020)

Arcadia (2020) : Benjamin at the Mall Fruitmarket Gallery Bookmarket, Waverley Mall, Edinburgh EH1 1BQ 6th Feb – 29th March 2020 / Preview 5th Feb 6-8pm Arcadia (2020) comments on the role of digital capitalism in the virtual and physical spaces of modern consumerism. Text from Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project (1939) is fed through Google’s advertising platform and displayed as if the words were commodities … Continue reading Arcadia (2020)

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NEWSPEAK 2019: Edinburgh Festival Fringe, August 2019

Installation by PIP THORNTON & RAY INTERACTIVE at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, August 2019. Part of DATA LATES, the installation ran periodically throughout the festival in the hours of darkness, with one complete run through on 26th August 2019, the final day of the Edinburgh Fringe, which took around 20 hours to complete. Video credits: Lucas Chih Peng Kao 高智鵬 http://lucaskaophotography.com (additional clip: Michael Sturrock) Photo … Continue reading NEWSPEAK 2019: Edinburgh Festival Fringe, August 2019

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We Make Money Not Art: Interview

Linguistic capitalism. Has Google become an all powerful usurer of language? I was interviewed by Régine Debatty for her wonderful We Make Money Not Art blog. It was a great opportunity to talk about the new iterations and directions of my research into linguistic capitalism and the monetisation of language by Google’s search and advertising platforms. Full interview can be found here:  https://we-make-money-not-art.com/linguistic-capitalism/ Thanks Régine! Continue reading We Make Money Not Art: Interview

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NEWSPEAK 2019

NEWSPEAK 2019 is the latest iteration of my ongoing intervention into linguistic capitalism and the economic, cultural and political effects of the monetisation of language by Google’s search and advertising platforms. The installation was a collaboration with Ray Interactive as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival Data Lates program. FULL DETAILS OF NEWSPEAK 2019 HERE Full details for the project can be found in the … Continue reading NEWSPEAK 2019

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Guest lecture in Amsterdam this friday

I’m talking ‘Linguistic Capitalism: Critique and Intervention’ as part of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie graphic design department’s Opening Lecture series this Friday in Amsterdam. It’s open to the public – 18:30pm at Butchers Tears, Karperweg 45, Amsterdam. The amazing invite GIF is by design students Benedikte Hindstedgaard & Pernille Knudsgaar. Also speaking is Danah Abdullah from Brunel University – I am very much looking forward … Continue reading Guest lecture in Amsterdam this friday

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new (and old) work at the Fringe

This is my first Edinburgh Festival, and I find myself right in the bubbling middle of it. I’m doing three things: 1. as part of the Fringe Design Informatics ‘Data Play’ program, my {poem}.py printer will be churning away in the most amazingly designed Pavilion space from 2nd – 26th August, along with a specially curated collection of poem-receipts. Robbie Burns, Jackie Kay, Frightened Rabbit, … Continue reading new (and old) work at the Fringe

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Language in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction: A Thesis

I passed my PhD viva a couple of weeks ago, so can now post the finalised version here if anyone wants to read any of it (but please cite accordingly): THORNTON_THESIS_FINALFINAL. Language in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction: A Critique of Linguistic Capitalism will also be available from my Royal Holloway PURE page, but I want to keep monitoring the price of the thesis over … Continue reading Language in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction: A Thesis

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