The Hucksters meet The Tricksters

Thanks again to Digg for the pointer - "The Ad Generator is a generative artwork that explores how advertising uses and manipulates language. Words and semantic structures from real corporate slogans are remixed and randomized to generate invented slogans. These slogans are then paired with related images from Flickr, thereby generating fake advertisements on the fly. By remixing corporate slogans, I intend to show how the language of advertising is both deeply meaningful, in that it represents real cultural values and desires, and yet utterly meaningless in that these ideas have no relationship to the products being sold. In using the Flickr images, the piece explores the relationship between language and image, and how meaning is constructed by the juxtaposition of the two.

The ad generator was created by Alexis Lloyd as a component of an MFA thesis project in the Design and Technology department at Parsons The New School for Design."

The server has been down today and the site loads the Ad Generator slowly (well for me on broadband in Paris, anyway) but it's well worth a look.

For some reason it reminds me of that Dudley Moore film Crazy People where the nuts start creating ads with slogans like - "Volvo. They're boxy, but they're good" and "Forget Paris. Come to Greece. We're nicer"