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Emergent
is a generator of Internet image collages and a true web "browser"
in the sense of allowing casual and random exploration of
the World Wide Web. Emergent tears images from their
original documents and recycles them into a novel experience.
Advertisements, corporate logos, web camera photos, and even
pornographic imagery are all juxtaposed to suggest curious
new meanings. Unrestricted by purpose, Emergent wanders
into the web’s darkest recesses and provides the user with
a random sampling of all that the Internet has to offer. Emergent
is the poo poo platter of web browsers - users are encouraged
to try something new and, though not always palatable, the
experiences are at least fresh.
Traversing
the Internet entirely on its own, Emergent collects
the URLs of every image it encounters and utilizes random
subsets as source material for its collage generation. These
collages are dynamically updated as old images are replaced
with new ones from increasingly disparate sources. The result
is a constantly changing montage of images from widely varying
websites, the juxtaposition of elements from across the world,
and the creation of an ever-changing visionary experience.
At the
same time, every component image of Emergent’s collages
maintains a link back to its on-line point of origin. A user
may click on any particularly interesting image to pull up
the website whence it originated. In this way, Emergent
becomes a non-directed web browser, presenting the user with
the opportunity to discover web sites that might otherwise
be ignored or missed.
Emergent’s
behavior can be manipulated to alter the user experience.
Parameters of collage generation such as the number of images
utilized, the method of placement, and the speed of replacement
can all be varied from a rapid-fire single image photomontage
to a slow (or even static) collage consisting of hundreds
of images. The user may also impose control over the web crawling
functionality (to point the crawler to or block out particular
web sites).
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