Netomat

Maciej Wisniewski (b. 1958)
netomatTM, 1999
Meta-browser, computers, and projectors
www.netomat.net

netomatTM takes visitors for a ride into the Internet’s subconscious. Unlike traditional web interfaces such as web browsers, which rely on the model of the web page and retrieve preconfigured content, netomatTM engages an Internet that is alive and unpredictable. In response to words and phrases typed in by the viewer, netomatTM dialogues with the Internet to retrieve text, images, and audio, and to flow them simultaneously onto the screen without regard to the display design of the data source. Using a new, audio-visual language designed specifically to explore the unexplored Internet, netomatTM reveals how the ever-expanding network interprets and reinterprets cultural concepts and themes.

In “Data Dynamics,” visitors enter a netomat theater, where they are surrounded by a collage of streaming images, text, animations, voices, and music triggered by a series of preconfigured inputs. Visitors can then traverse the Internet’s subconscious by both selecting the inputs and steering the visual flow of the information.