The Pursuit of Happiness

The Pursuit
of Happiness

ISBN 978–3–033–10445–7

Wherever there are people searching for happiness, there will always be someone to show them the right path. Every copy collects 365 possible paths for your daily guidance. Every other copy has 365 other options. They are randomly generated out of a database of 4’092’336 possibilities.

🪄 Installation-View of the BESTFORM 2024 Exhibition at Kornhaus Forum Bern 🖼️

The Pursuit of Happiness is a daily tear-off calendar for your daily guidance to live a #happylife. It is dedicated to create a path to find happiness, starting by optimising processes. Using thousands of inspirational quotes, an algorithm creates new ones, without human intervention – the purest form of self-optimization.

The Pursuit of Happiness demonstrates and criticises the methods of self-proclaimed life and happiness-coaches and entrepreneurs and pushes the possibilities of self-optimization to the limit. Through the complete creation and curation of the content by algorithms, an even more absurd non-sense is created.

The edition 2025 is sold out. There are some copies left.
Write to support@thepursuitofhappiness.xyz to get one.

All generated content is neither scientifically substantiated nor based on scientific research. If there is a sense of meaning in a quotation, it is not intentional on part of the algorithm. A daily use of the guide is recommended. Any interpretation of the content is the responsibility of the user. The Pursuit of Happiness doesn’t guarantee a happier life and disclaims any kind of responsibility for the happiness of third parties. The Pursuit of Happiness is not intended to serve as a genuine guide to happiness and is not a substitute for professional psychological counselling or therapy. If you are really looking for help, please consult a qualified professional.

The algorithm samples and re-combines thousands of quotations from modern deities like Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein, the Dalai Lama, Abraham Lincoln and others, thereby generating new quotations that have never been mentioned before. The algorithm is structured in a way that it changes the semantics but retains the syntax of the original quotation.

The algorithm takes over all other tasks from layout to file export at the push of a button using the basil.js library.

The Pursuit of Happiness does not use machine learning or any other form of artificial learning, apart from the visual material used for web-based formats. The video was generated on the 9th of January 2022 using StyleGAN2-ADA with an input of 3000 beach images with centred horizon.

This project was made possible through the generous support of the Berner Design Stiftung

Concept, Design, Script:
Sebastian Wyss
wyssseb.ch

Printed in Switzerland:
CricPrint, Marly

Typeface:
Unica 77LL Bold, Lineto

Every copy was fully generated in between 40–60 seconds.