Every day, numerous users access the Ars Electronica website, each arriving via a specific search keyword or phrase. This keyword becomes the user’s “personal tagline” for Ars Electronica, transforming this year’s exclusive tagline, “A New Cultural Economy,” into a personalized version for each individual. By replacing the commercially crafted tagline with live, globally inspired words, the dynamic social value of Ars Electronica can be captured.

Throughout the festival, all forms of advertising—whether web-based, posters, stickers, or public screen content—will be generated from this system. Simultaneously, a shop installation was set up at the 2008 Ars Electronica Festival, where the collective will visualize the taglines conceived by people from around the world. These taglines will then automatically generate T-shirts based on their design.

This project was carried out in collaboration with Dentsu Inc. It was also applied to the slogans of the Ars Electronica Center (“Museum of the Future > Museum of ???”) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (“Museum of Contemporary Art > Museum of ???”).

The project is recognized as an artistic exploration of how vast amounts of data, well before the term “big data” became a buzzword, can be utilized not for commercial purposes, but as a core element of a new cultural economy.