Lisa Mandemaker

Meta Search is a critical research project that challenges the limitations of the filter bubble by creating new interactive contexts to search the Internet. 

The filter bubble – a term coined by Eli Pariser – is a unique universe of information on the Internet created for each of us, which fundamentally alters the way we encounter ideas and information. When performing a personal search on the Internet, algorithms selectively guess what information a user would like to see based on information about the user that has been collected. This way, the Internet shows us what it thinks we want to see, and not necessarily what we need to see.

Meta Search is a series of tests of different spatial contexts for performing a personal search on the Internet. The aim is to find new ways of searching and to test the limits of the filter bubble. I do this by creating a distance between the search engines we use on a daily basis, and reshape the way we can input our search queries. The designed context will in influence the type of search, and by changing the input we could perceive the output in a different way.

In this way, Meta Search functions as a mental and/or social filter between the user(s) and the search engine, and as an attempt to break away from the filter bubble and its negative connotations.