Mirrors that Pout: Subjectivity in the Age of the Screen
Ted Hiebert
The Scott Rogers Google Project
How many Scott Rogers does it take to find Scott Rogers? An interesting paradox since the more Scott Rogers one finds, the more difficult it is to say which Scott Rogers one was looking for. Equally, the more Scott Rogers discovered, the less Scott Rogers is able to just be himself, the less distinct is each and every given Scott Rogers, the more each begins to diffuse into the nebulae of Scotts-Rogers, the less recognizable is any given Scott Rogers among the horde of others who, by all accounts, seem just like him.
This would seem to be the central point of a recent project by the artist Scott Rogers (2005). The "Scott Rogers Google Project" is a collection of Internet links -- a portal to all things Scott Rogers -- and ultimately, a virtual icon to his material disappearance.
Imagine how the story might unfold... I look for myself on the internet. I find, not the self I expected but instead a horde of dopplegangers: a superfluity of Scotts-Rogers, each implicated in a real-life actuality which is not mine. An excess of Scott Rogers perhaps, the 80,000 "hits" on a single name casting screenal uncertainty on the identity of any given one, shadow-games of an electronic sun. And yet, in each manifestation of Scott Rogers I nevertheless find something familiar, even if it is only a name.
What happens when one begins to search for oneself, to search for self-knowledge and self-understanding, only to find oneself multiplied and fragmented? One's face is the same as someone else's, at least insofar as identity involves putting a face to a name. Here, what seems like an intensely narcissistic endeavor -- the competition for a name, the competition for Google ratings -- takes exactly the opposite form: a dissolution of particularity under the auspices of the multiple.
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Perhaps, in a strange and subtle twist, the "Scott Rogers Google Project" is in fact more of an epitaph than a reunion -- monument to an individual who has come up against the horizon of his name, from which only two responses seem probable: Here one either finds one's name and loses oneself, or one finds oneself in losing one's name.
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