Dina Kelberman's project I'm Google strings photos together like a writer connects thoughts, resulting in a long visual narrative on her Tumblr page. Culled from Google Image Search, the photos create a stream of consciousness that's riveting to follow.
Kelberman, who lives in Baltimore, collects online images like some people collect junk on Craigslist.
"I'm super addicted to my computer and over time it's become a habit," she says.
She started the Tumblr in 2011 but the project has blown up over the past few weeks. NPR science correspondent and co-host of the podcast Radiolab, Robert Krulwich, called it "subtly addictive, psychologically sophisticated art" on his blog. "Once you start looking at Dina's pictures, I warn you: It's very, very hard to stop," he writes.
Kelberman thinks people like the work because it has order. We live in an oversaturated visual world with billions of photos and I'm Google cuts through the chaos.
"I think there is something inherently pleasing when things are categorized," she says. "It's easier to deal with the universe if we catalog it."
By now Kelberman's an expert at Google's "Search by Image" feature. Like a research librarian, she knows all the tricks. Keywords are important, especially if the pictures are about a very specific topic, like dune buggies. She thinks Google's "visually similar" feature is junk because it seems to rely too much on color.
She's drawn to personal snapshots, product imagery and photos with a certain color pattern. She likes personal pictures because there's a story in the photo that she'll never know. She likes product imagery because she assumes the person who posted it never thought it would be turned into art.
The transition pictures are the hardest to find. Like a good transition between paragraphs, the image she chooses needs to act as a bridge between two photos but can't be too obvious.
"Depending on how difficult it is to make the transition it can take me a week to figure out how the hell to do it or it can happen really fast," she says.
