Christophe Bruno

Christophe Bruno (born 1964) is a French visual artist who works particularly in the medium of internet art, and has been described as the world's first "Human Browser".

Moreover, French reality TV star Nabilla Benattia, mentions Bruno in her book from July 2013. She develops a Cartesian analysis about Christophe Bruno.

Background Bruno was born in 1964 in Bayonne, France. He lives and works in Paris. He began his artistic work in 2001, influenced by the net.art movement. His artworks include Iterature, Logo.Hallucination, The Google Adwords Happening and many other pieces.

His work has been shown at many international festivals and museums. Bruno was awarded the ARCO (Madrid's International Contemporary Art Fair) new media prize in 2007, and a prize at the Prix Ars Electronica in 2003.

He divides his time between his artistic work, curating, teaching, lectures, and publications.

Work Bruno's thesis is that through the web, and especially through the ability to search and monitor it thoroughly by means of Google, the world is heading towards a global text, which, among other things, enables a new form of textual, semantic capitalism, which he explores in his work.

Bruno's works include: Iterature, a collection of pieces or documentations of performances which use the text from the web as material. Many of the pieces are search engine hacks (primarily Google). They get hold of text floating around the web and use it as raw material for various re-workings, cut-ups, algorithmic text generations, visualizations, cartographies and so forth. Adwords Happenings, which plays with the rules of Google's Adwords service by inserting "spam poems" in the ad boxes that appear selectively to the user according to his personal search. Clicking on these links would of course then redirect the user to Bruno's website.

Exhibitions

Awards Bruno has won the following awards, and has been awarded the following grants:

Winner of the ARCO new media prize 2007, Madrid Selection to Laboral Cyberspaces, Gijón, 2007 Winner of the Share Festival 2007, Turin DICREAM (CNC-Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication), aide à la production, 2006 CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques), aide à la première exposition, 2006 DICREAM (CNC-Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication), aide à la maquette, 2004 Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica 2003, Linz

References and further reading