Ilja Kolosovs

A virtual bot strolls through the city and complains about it. As it wanders, it pulls negative reviews from Google Maps, stopping only to recite the angriest things people have said.

The work uses the logic of the virtual dérive: an unplanned drift through a mapped environment. In doing so, it asks what kind of city appears when public space is filtered through platform images, ratings, and user-generated judgments.

Rather than treating the map as a neutral tool, Ilja develops custom software to probe and misuse these systems, scraping images and data in search of accidental, personal, and overlooked moments that slip past the platform’s clean, sterilized appearance. Would Not Recommend also points toward a broader artistic approach in which the bot can be reoriented through different geolocated datasets — from Airbnb listings to maps where people report feeling unsafe — so that its voice and behavior change according to the data it inhabits, raising broader questions about how platforms and datasets shape urban life.