Published in 2013, Google, Volume 1 has every word in the dictionary, in order, replaced by images. King Zog’s Felix Heyes and Ben West used the Oxford English Pocket Dictionary and its 21,110 words as the basis for this book of images.
The words and definitions have disappeared, replaced by each word’s first result from Google Images – the most ubiquitous and comprehensive visual identification tool on the Internet, that supposedly offers (as its founding principle) the most relevant and stimulating images to our written queries. Google, Volume 1 takes its name from the verb to google, officially entered into the Oxford Dictionary in June 2006, to describe information retrieval via the Internet in the broader sense.
Google, volume 1 was released as a limited-edition of 1000 copies, sold out for years now. So, we asked ourselves: What does the world look like through the eyes of Google images? What is the most relevant image for each word of the dictionary—today? And what does it say of the evolution of visual language of these past ten years?
“As a computational photography of the entire Internet, Google, volume 2 captures the vast scale of the odd and beautiful landscape of information we all share. And by doing so in the unusually dissonant format of a gargantuan printed book, it shows that our world can feel more united when we *see* instead of just search.”
– John Maeda
“It’s time to do Google, volume 2. Oh! I’m REALLY curious to see what Vol.2 looks like inside… The Internet has no designer. It’s chaos, but I wonder if we’ll see ‘rules’ emerging.”
– Douglas Coupland
Introduction by Douglas Coupland
22 416 pictures
1 328 pages
21 x 30,2 cm
ISBN: 978-2-36568-089-9
