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Please join the Science Museum Research Seminar.
These seminars are open to students,
museum professionals and academics with an interest in research relating to material culture and museums.
Feel free to bring a packed lunch to eat during the seminar.
Pip Thornton, A critique of linguistic capitalism (and an artistic intervention) (Royal Holloway, University of London)
23 May, 13-14h
Dana Studio
Dana Research Centre and Library, 165 Queen’s Gate, London SW7 5HD.
Pip Thornton: A critique of linguistic capitalism (and an artistic intervention)
In an age of ubiquitous digital technology and information exchange, the selling of words has never been more lucrative. Digitised words are capable of carrying far more than linguistic meaning, and as such are
valuable commodities in the advertising marketplace. Nobody knows this better than Google, which made its fortune from the auctioning of words through Adwords;
a form of ‘linguistic capitalism’ (Kaplan, 2014) in which the contextual or linguistic value of language is negated at the expense of its exchange value. But what are the residual cultural or political effects of this algorithmic exploitation
of language? As the linguistic data we create and upload is tailored to court search algorithms, and keywords take on referential values unanchored to narrative context, digitised language has perhaps reached peak performativity (Lyotard, 1979); linguistic
input narrowed and restricted in order to achieve maximum financial output. This paper seeks to explore what happens to creativity in language when its passage through digital space is mediated by money. But more than that, this paper is also an attempt to
make the side-effects of linguistic capitalism visible through artistic intervention. The politics which lurks within the algorithmic hierarchies and logic of the search engine industry is often hidden by the sheer ubiquity and in some way the aesthetics of
the Google empire. The paper will therefore also explain and demonstrate my own attempt to reverse this performative logic of production (Lyotard, 1979) in the form of a research/art project called
{poem}.py which I hope goes some way in rescuing language from the clutches of the market; re-politicising
it (Benjamin, 1936), and reclaiming it for art.
We looked forward to seeing you.
Convened by Bergit Arends and Oliver Carpenter
Bergit Arends
Acting Research and Public History Manager
Tuesday to Thursday
Dana Research Centre and Library
Science Museum
165 Queens Gate
London SW7 5HD
Tel 0207 942 4036
www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/research
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