AOL User 23187425, by AOL User 23187425

AOL User 23187425

by AOL User 23187425

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about

In 2006 AOL released to the web three months worth of search engine data by 657,000 users. To anonymize the data AOL assigned numbers to the users.
We first read about the release of this anonymized data on either Digg or boingboing. On boingboing we came across Thomas Claburn's discovery of anomalous data entered by AOL user 23187425.

boingboing.net/2006/08/10/the-search-engine-co.html

Linking through to Lot49 (no longer active) we, like many others, were entranced by the entries of this user. Mr. Claburn puts it better than we:

"Within the third of the ten files of user search queries AOL mistakenly released (user-ct-test-collection-03), there's a poem of sorts. Between May 7 and May 31 of this year, AOL user 23187425 submitted a series of more than 8,200 queries with no evident intention of finding anything - only a handful of the entries are paired with a search results URL. Rather, the author's series of queries forms a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy."

Downloading and reading these search queries we were instantly reminded of writings by people in manic states. It was like revisiting writings we have received from friends and family suffering from the psychotic highs of manic depression. It also reminded us of some of the authors that we at the MVM continually rework - Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud, and William S. Burroughs. Friends we shared the material with had the same reaction. Reading the queries was so similar to reading works we produced with (our then radio theatre company) UDV that we knew we had to find a way to bring user 23187425 to life.

To that end we began a series of recordings of the material. The first available is four and a half hours long, read by The MVM house Mac (at the time) using Vicki.

You can no longer visit Lot49 to read the text for yourself. Nor is much of Mr. Claburn's exploration of the work still online. On the Internet Archive you can find the text:

web.archive.org/web/20061023233520/http://www.lot49.com/aol_user_23187425.txt

We could not in our last search find the comments on Mr. Claburn's blog about user 23187425. There was a great deal of conjecture, and perhaps the beginning of an outline of who or what made these wonderfully enigmatic searches developing in his conversations in the comments. The voice of Vicki may be more appropriate than we initially imagined. Regardless, I'd like to thank Mr. Claburn for bringing this to light.

You CAN find his art book developed from the text here:

superbunker.com/projects/i-feel-better/

credits

released September 7, 2006

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about

The Museum of Viral Memory Eugene, Oregon

A lifetime in noise & experimental stitched to the last 100 years of electroacoustic, ecoacoustic, concrete magique

Improv jazz come unpinned from time

Conceptual music built from field recordings

Sound art for dreaming, drifting, disappearing

Ritual magick, slow to cast; slow to coalesce

Invocations unintended for human ears

Music in geologic time

Aureality for the non-conscious mind ... more

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