Sebastian Schmieg is getting creative with code (see below). As far as I interpret the code right (and I just vaguely understand this 01-gibberish) he uses the Google image search for similar images and starts with a black image. And always uses the first resulting image for a next search and so on. And putting all the results together in a video. And the fun part: even though the start is just a blank/black image, a (little random, still amusing) narrative is created. Totally generative with no human manipulation at all. It’s a bit dry, though, without any soundtrack. Try listening to this in background while watching the video: Philip Glass, Glassworks.

import re, subprocess, time

class GoogleSearchByImage :

    GOOGLE_URL = "http://www.google.com"

    GOOGLE_SBI_URL = "/searchbyimage?image_url="
    
    AGENT_ID = "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1"

    MIN_SECONDS_BETWEEN_REQUESTS = 2

    _myLastRequestTimestamp = 0
    
    _myCurrentHtml = ""

    def scrape(self, theReference) :
        if time.time() - self._myLastRequestTimestamp < self.MIN_SECONDS_BETWEEN_REQUESTS :
            time.sleep(self.MIN_SECONDS_BETWEEN_REQUESTS - (time.time() - self._myLastRequestTimestamp))
            return self.scrape(theReference)
        else :
            self._myCurrentHtml = self.getHtml(self.GOOGLE_URL + self.GOOGLE_SBI_URL + theReference)
            self._myLastRequestTimestamp = time.time()
 
    def getHtml(self, theUrl) :
        try :
            myHtml = subprocess.check_output(["curl", "-L", "-A", self.AGENT_ID, theUrl], stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
            return myHtml
        except :
            print "Curl error. Will sleep for 10 seconds"
            time.sleep(10)
            return self.getHtml(theUrl)
         
    
    def getSimilarImages(self) :
        myPattern = re.compile("\" href\=\"\/imgres\?imgurl\=(.*?)(\&amp|\%3F)")        
        myImages = myPattern.findall(self._myCurrentHtml)
        myImagesUrls = []        
        for myImage in myImages :
            myImagesUrls.append(myImage[0])
        return myImagesUrls
    
    def getLinkToSimilarImagesPage(self) :
        myPattern = re.compile("\<a href\=\"([^\"]+[.]?)\"\>Visually similar images\<\/a\>")
        myPageUrl = myPattern.findall(self._myCurrentHtml)
        myPageUrl = str(myPageUrl[0]).replace("&amp;", "&")
        myPageUrl += "&biw=1600&bih=825" # always keep this
        return self.GOOGLE_URL + myPageUrl
(via Lebowitz)

E-Z Fynd. Maybe a google killer. Nonetheless a next-gen approach to semantic web search. And lightspeed fast.

(via The Awesomer)