Gretchen Andrew is a Search Engine Artist and Internet Imperialist who programs her vision boards to manipulate the internet with art & desire. Her vision boards are reflections of both who she is and who she wants to be. As such, Gretchen wanted to answer most of this questionnaire using close-ups from some of my latest vision boards.
Name : Gretchen Andrew @gretchenandrew
Birthplace : I was born in Los Angeles, California but I grew up in New Hampshire. Which is pretty different. But my whole life people thought I was like from LA. Especially when I was living in London and Tokyo. I moved back here a couple of years ago and am happy to be back in line with cliches and expectations. Los Angeles is the perfect home for my work because it’s a place people love to try to dismiss as trivial but is, without doubt, the center of culture, especially for studio art and food.
Métier : Search Engine Artist / Internet Imperialist, that is to say, I invented a job, and here’s the description:
As a Search Engine Artist, I co-author artworks with a search engine. As an Internet Imperialist, I manipulate the global internet to my own specifications, though I choose to do this in a way that is obvious to humans but of which the machines are oblivious.
Sources of inspiration: Love
Sources of motivation: Happiness. Or the pursuit of.
What makes you happy : Pretty much everything you see in my vision boards is there because it makes me happy. I am constantly inventing the future I want and that includes a lot of flowers and champagne.
Favorite reads : My favorite books are Milan Kundera’s Farewell Waltz and Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore.
Favorite tunes : Here’s my current on repeat.
Favorite foods : Coffee.
Beauty tips :I spend a lot of time with people that make me smile…and I dye my eyebrows.
Favorite ways to unwind: Going to an onsen. But when not in Japan, Los Angeles’s K-Town spas or the locker room at the LA Athletic Club will do.
What gets you in a working flow : Before I go to sleep, I always write a handwritten to-do list that I am very inflexible with when I wake up at 5am. To get in the flow it usually starts with:
- Meditate
- Make coffee
- Drink Coffee
What are you working on now : I am working on manipulating the 2020 presidential election in a way that reeducates Google’s artificial intelligence and increases general literacy on how the internet works. NBD. I call this project The Next American President and the result is a series of red, white, and blue vision boards that express my hopes for the next American president. They look more like a growing garden than anything we traditionally think of as political. I am also starting work on an exhibition with Annka Kakultys for February next year called, “Other Forms of Travel.”
Favorite motto / quote : Thelonious Monk: “A genius is the one most like himself.”
