Same Same is an online performance on the online presence of the Cabaret Voltaire, birthplace of Dada in Switzerland. For the duration of the exhibition, a software bot replaces all images on the website with algorithmically similar images.
The piece temporarily deprives the Cabaret Voltaire of control over their online imagery; instead it is Google's similar image algorithm which assumes control. This frequently leads to humorous shifts which are at the same time very much to the point: artists are often recognised and their artworks replaced by other pieces. Abstract forms, gestures, and objects are reduced to their basic structural forms and replaced with something similar-looking.
Same Same counterposes contemporary surveillance technologies with historic Dada artworks. It shows contemporary image recognition at work, making the algorithm observable, which is increasingly constitutive for what and how we see.
