iMagine

iMagine wants to be a ludic reflection about overwhelming and overflowing images, it is based on the collaborative mechanics of the Net and freely inspired by René Magritte‘s works. The logos of our symbolic system, manipulated and controlled by an elite and not by the whole community, are defined by processes and choices based on marketing techniques and determined by the need to make profit.
Symbols, or, as Barthes calls them, logotechnics, that derive from this logical process impose a one-way relationship with the imaginary sphere of every individual, whose only role becomes that of consuming the cultural element through the good/medium that conveys the message. The symbolic relations crystallize the chain of meaning that constitutes the base of the whole system.

iMagine is an image search engine based on a double action:

1. De-automatization > this mechanism allows users to regain a symbol that belongs to the collective media imaginary and to put it in a database, with some information related (TItle, Category, Keywords), so that it will be possible to create a new cultural context for a well-known symbol. The name iMagine comes from the imaginative effort that the user must do when he/she records his/her image
2. Search > the search allows users to look for images in the database. The recording action allows the change of the mechanism of query/result of the search engine, that will provide only image with a new context, depending on the user’s query. The gap between the expected result and the actual one is the starting point to build up new meanings and new correlations based on the new images produced.

Call to active partecipation to the web-based project
iMagine > a ludic reflection about mainstream imaginary*
by the imaginary art group Les Liens Invisibles
http://imagine.lesliensinvisibles.org