Thead generator is a generative artwork that dynamically creates fake advertisements in order to explore how advertising language constructs and manipulates meaning. Words and semantic structures from real corporate slogans are remixed to generate invented slogans, which are then paired with related images from Flickr, thereby creating fake advertisements on the fly. In using the Flickr images, the piece explores the relationship between language and image, and how meaning is constructed through the juxtaposition of the two. By remixing corporate slogans, The Ad Generator emphasizes how advertising uses grand and meaningful ideas to sell mundane and interchangeable products, and how corporate rhetoric promotes consumerism as a means to fulfilling deeper desires.
The ad generator was created by Alexis Lloyd asa component of an MFA thesis project in the Designand Technology department at Parsons The New School for Design.
