Geoweb

GeoTag is an Internet version of the word game Geography.

A movie of a locale (with its name written below) plays in the central box of the splash screen. On the right side of the movie, the visitor sees five location names. The correct response begins with the last letter of the place name of the movie currently playing. Clicking the name that begins with a corresponding letter opens a new movie in the central box, while the previous one migrates elsewhere on the screen, eventually creating a web of linked movies. Using the mouse to click and drag, visitors can reposition these movies however they like, and keep on playing. After a certain number of correct answers accrue, the user is rewarded by warm applause, and the game begins afresh.

The viewer's IP location is displayed in the top left corner of the splash screen. In the top right corner, a link opens to the Visitor Centre. Here the visitor is welcomed and invited to leave a webcam auto-portrait. S/he sees pictures of other visitors who have registered in the Visitor Centre. S/he is also invited to contribute to the GeoTag database by presenting a webcam movie of her/his own location. This film will then be available in subsequent games of GeoTag.

GeoTag seeks to highlight the fragmentary and disjointed character of our web-mediated experience of geography that results in this desire to make connections.

Have fun!

Cheryl Sourkes began as an analog photographer but subsequently turned to internet cameras for material. Since the late nineties she has created photographic and video works using images webcast by various kinds of web cameras, including traffic cams, city cams, chapel cams, business cams, home cams and cams that transmit from Internet cafés. Her work foregrounds a number of issues regarding this reservoir of images, such as the proliferation of cyber images and the increased access to them, the relation between private and public realms and the vexed question of voyeurism and surveillance. Sourkes has presented her work in Canada and abroad in numerous institutions and exhibition centres. Her book Tons of Webcammer Babes, published by the artists run centre VU, was launched in Montreal during the Mois de la photo, 2009.