LIZ M TOBIN

Buying Terminology explores the entanglement of language, commerce, and surveillance in the digital economy. The project interrogates how behavioural data and algorithmic targeting—particularly within e-commerce platforms—are mediated through keywords, metadata, and visual protocols.

Drawing from Raymond Williams' Keywords and theories of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff) and knowledge/power (Foucault), the project treats e-commerce terminology—such as "anonymous checkout" and "average order value"—as cultural artefacts. These terms, sourced from advertising glossaries and SEO documents, are used to trigger Google image searches, producing a stream of visual data tied to commercial semantics.

Using a deliberately mimetic methodology, the resulting search engine images are printed and re-photographed as flat artefacts. This process returns behavioural metadata—intended for tracking and prediction—back into the realm of the physical and photographic. By materializing the flow of digital consumption, the project draws attention to the shift from discrete, tangible commodities to spatially abstract, temporally complex algorithmic artefacts.

In doing so, Buying Terminology stages a form of resistance or slow disruption. It surfaces the aesthetics of surveillance infrastructure and highlights how interfaces, search algorithms, and platform language shape not only what we buy, but how we think, behave, and understand ourselves within the logic of networked capitalism.