“4.Wanting to write on love, is facing the mess of language: this panic area where language is both not enough yet too excessive […] and poor […].”

Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Once this number determined the application searches in picture's source code if this variable is present. If it's found, it's replaced by the sentence ‘I love you': the architecture of the code is disturbed. The web browser needed for the viewing interprets the file and tries to display the picture. But transformations in the source code may modify it and can lead to the apparition of artefacts like; pixelation, distortion, addition of new colours, partial or total reinterpretation of the picture, disappearance of the subject in the picture or even absolute impossibility for the browser to display the picture: apparition of a broken icon…

This absurd way of literally writing love in the picture, directly in the source code gives the viewer to see at every new connection a new collection of pictures more or less full of love… the more it's written in the code; the fewer pictures can be seen.

What is the lovecounter? It's an online counter that establishes the number of "I love you" written in images source code from the "I love you" collections. This is a concrete and scientific way to know as precisely as possible how much love is streamed online and more important how much love is contained in this work. Every time a picture is displayed and the code modified by love messages, the counter is updated. The more time goes, the more love grows…