[book]
"The Amazon referred to is Amazon.com the online warehouse of books, CDs, movies, toys, etc. which has developed some of the most sophisticated filters for their vast database of transactions. Based on these filters, Amazon makes recommendations to their customers. The artist has collected and cross-fertilized a selection of Amazon recommendations and has graphed relationships between books customers bought on Amazon.com in conjunction with their music CD purchases.
(Angie) Waller's approach adds a political slant by profiling relationships between politically liberal and conservative titles, popular books among the US military, and profiles on world leaders such as George W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher. Waller's familiar forms of systematic charting attempt to give a new take on American politics at the same time as they represent a millisecond of uncanny systematized recommendations. Her aim is to repurpose a supposedly helpful customer service into an amusing window of collective reflection on popular culture and values.
'I don't imagine my book has shed any new light on politics and consumer niches, but perhaps it foreshadows future services to be provided by Amazon. I foresee an excellent dating service on their horizon; it could be called "ConsumerCoupling.com". The research for the book spurred my interest in databases and their relevance to aesthetic and anthropological concerns throughout history.'"
link to more blurbage/ sales / preview
via: couch projects
~A how-to guide to data-mining Amazon.
Posted by Cieciel at January 29, 2005 01:35 AM