UK artists create ‘Google,’ a visual dictionary made of 21,000 Google Images

Using Google Images and 21,000 words from your run-of-the-mill English dictionary, UK artists Felix Heyes and Ben West have created a 1,240-page visual dictionary, aptly titled Google. To create the book, a pair of PHP scripts downloaded the first image for each word from Google’s service, placed them into a three-column layout, and exported the final product as a series of PDF files. West describes the hand-bound book as “an unfiltered, uncritical record of the state of human culture in 2012,” in which about half of the images are “revolting medical photos, porn, racism or bad cartoons.” Currently, Heyes and West plan on issuing a short run of a paperback edition of Google. Stay up to date on the book’s progress by signing up at either artist’s page.