week 6 05.06.2003

Victor Vina

Flux

Flux is a browser monitoring live search engine queries conducted by internet users around the world. By extracting information from hidden websites, Flux renders private web enquiries into a grid of 16 modules. The browser was conceived as a web barometer, revealing internet users different concerns, curiosities, needs and desires.

In current internet technologies, information is organised in different interdependent layers. Flux intercepts these vertical layers by interfacing them within a horizontal structure. This provides a filtering process through which a huge amount of information is mediated within Flux's 'little resolution' environment. By visualising collective real time data-streams in this way, Flux monitors the different categories of knowledge currently sought after on the internet.

To access a second layer of information within Flux the user simply selects one of the modules displaying a topic of interest. A web crawler then obtains context from a search engine and displays it on every module. By selecting a third time, the user can follow meta-data, creating a path of related units of information.

By reassessing internet currencies in this way, Flux reflects upon the distribution of internet information and how it may provoke interpretations and associations when mediated in alternative ways.

<<project archive