( CNN ) -- For his 2010 book `` A New American Picture , '' artist Doug Rickard used photos he gathered from Google Street View to give viewers a voyeuristic peek into several of America 's most economically distressed neighborhoods . The point was to draw people 's attention to the places we read about in the news — and comment about from the comfort of our own neighborhoods — but never actually visit . Now , Rickard is following that work up with a new book called `` N.A. , '' where he continues to mine the Internet for views of America that are anything but idyllic . This time , he snatches frame grabs from videos that were made on cell phones and uploaded to YouTube . What he ended up with is a jumble of violence , exploitation , joy rides , drugs and other illegal activities . It is a view of a country struggling with a shifting economic and cultural landscape , one where technology can create or amplify crisis and where cyberbullying , revenge porn and `` slut shaming '' have gone viral . `` The range of search terms for the work was huge but largely tied to the broken elements of the American economic spectrum , '' Rickard said . `` The search terms really started with simple city names and evolved . `` I started finding that due to the nature of YouTube , much of what was posted was predatory in nature and I needed to evolve the work to include that dynamic of the 'predatory act . ' I determined quickly that 'crackheads ' or 'girls passed out ' or 'hood fight ' were search terms on YouTube that would bring up massive amounts of content that people were uploading . '' Abusive behavior exploited by technology is not a new story , but Rickard becomes a predator among the predators , hunting for images to tell this dark American tale . He said he also used keywords such as `` police harassment , '' `` racial profiling '' and `` gang stalking '' to amass his images . The book is not a photojournalistic document — the lack of captions and context asks us to create our own narratives . The printed text in the book includes a poem created using comments from YouTube . And the low resolution of the frame grabs mostly protects the identities of the subjects and gives the visceral imagery an impressionistic gloss . Rickard acknowledged that the images show `` elements of social media and technology that are n't pretty , '' but he said the series is also about YouTube as medium and the way it has become `` a platform where people have a voice — it is an immediate stage with reach . '' He said the intimacy of the medium coming right from someone 's hand fascinates him . This point of view simply would n't be available to a photographer on the scene . `` I was the stranger in the car , a fly on the wall , '' Rickard said . `` They did n't know I was with them that night . '' He was a silent partner in the flow of data streams that thrive on predatory behavior — both the participants who exploit the vulnerable , and the viewers who encourage them with comments and `` likes . '' `` Usually the YouTube posters were looking to get 'hits ' or 'likes ' from the uploads and trying to get laughs , '' he said . `` In many ways , that dynamic was bringing out acts that were incredibly callous , such as paying people on the street to do pushups or cartwheels or showing the writing of the word 'fag ' on the face of a young girl that was passed out . I wanted to try and get at this dynamic itself . '' Rickard found that the streams that were most voluminous tended to be brutal , as though the technology itself was encouraging impulsive and dangerous behavior . He said `` N.A . '' is about our habits surrounding modern technology , but that it also comments on race and poverty . For poverty-stricken African-Americans isolated in deteriorating neighborhoods , the American dream may be an impossibility — the `` N.A . '' could stand for `` not applicable '' or perhaps `` need not apply . '' `` ' N.A . ' speaks to an inversion of the American dream , an American facade , an American illusion , '' Rickard said . He said there is `` a chasm that has been built like a fortress as relates to opportunity ... a deep division — economic , geographic , cultural , political — in America that many whites prefer to deny and ignore . '' Rickard hopes the book will be a wake-up call on issues of race , economic injustice and technology , saying , `` It is this America that I see in my mind , not the land of the free . ''
For his latest book , Doug Rickard snatches frames from uploaded cell phone videos . He searched for terms related 'to the broken elements of the American economic spectrum ' Much of what he found involved predatory acts , with people being exploited for 'likes ' He said his book is about modern technology as well as race and poverty .