2025
Powder-coated security spikes, electronics, LED displays continuously showing real search keywords from the local area, exposing the economic systems that convert language into data and attention into value. Data provided by Google Ads.

96 ×3000 ×150 mm

Created for Ruby Cruel, Inconvenient Truths transforms an object of exclusion into a glowing conduit for language. Anti-climb spikes, architectural tools designed to keep bodies out, are re-cast in reflective gold, becoming a precious yet hostile frame for a live text display.

The text running through the LEDs is generated by tracing real search patterns and keyword chains taken from SEO platforms, tools used by advertisers and content creators to predict and capitalise on what people are looking for online.

The process begins with an initial “seed” term (for example, ruby), which then unfurls into an associative chain of searches and related topics. Each link moves from something expected and neutral, to something unusual or absurd, and finally toward a revealing or uncomfortable insight, often exposing the economic, political, or surveillance systems that underpin online activity. The work extends my research into extractive infrastructures, how colonial trade logics persist in the commodification of language, consent, and prediction.

An example of the text scrolling on LED might say:

From Ruby to Ruby Gemstone Price, to Red Gemstones for Engagement Rings to Predicting Relationship Success with AI, to The Surveillance of Intimate Messaging to Metadata Extraction in London, to The Global Trade in Conflict Minerals.

Each leap reveals the invisible trade routes of language: how a single word can be mined, redirected, and commodified, carrying the user from desire to data point.

Installation View at Ruby Cruel London