As a metaphoric organ, Internet plays the role of the World nervous system, the transmission system for all sensations, either positive or negative, pleasures or pains. Nevertheless, this entity is schizophrenic. Excluding or denying parts of its own body, forgetting to take into consideration continents, languages, communities, because they don’t respect to the world press (Media) code: English speaking net connected communities. The language, the location, and the technological level of development determine the accuracy of the Internet feedback of the planet. Internet is a highly filtered culturally oriented nervous system.

“Mechanics of the Emotions” proceeds from a cliché: the Internet constitutes the equivalent of the world’s nervous system that can enable us to feel in real time the physiological state of the world. World Emotion Mapping is thus a dynamic cartography of this planet’s feelings that is compiled from an analysis of the results of thousands of search queries, whereby place names (the names of cities, countries, continents) are each associated with terms that designate a feeling. The number of hits assigns a value, intensity, a dimension to each element, which then represents a location on the dynamic map of emotions.

SFear

In April 2005 at the Exhibition SFear in the St. Pierre aux Nonnains Church in Metz, France, the map of FEAR was projected onto a 3.5-meter-diameter, helium-filled balloon. The same church was the site of an exhibition of relics representing the Frozen Feelings of the planet.

Frozen Feelings

A snapshot of the map of emotions (TERRIFIED, March 29, 2005, 09:31:17) distorts a virtual deflated balloon that is digitally carved and thus turned into an object of veneration (a relic) and then of transaction (a work of art).

(see Emotion Market)