Akiva Krauthamer

23 Feb 2016

My proposal for project 2 is visual site map. Site maps were a common feature on early website, but have started to fall out of favor. Classically a site map is a tree style diagram that shows the connections between pages within a website. These site maps were used to help people get around websites without getting lost.

My rendition of the site map will be a traditional geographic map or maybe a 3D landscape. The terrain, imagery and names of the map will all be created based on the information on the site pages. By entering any URL you will be able to generate a custom site map.
This project is an attempt to explore the idea of the site map and why we don’t see them very often anymore. It’s also poking fun at the never ending pull toward making our virtual spaces more and more physical. For example the films tron and the matrix both imagine the inner workings of computer programs as people moving around in virtual spaces.  An interesting side note is the film inside out where the inner workings of people are imagined as very similar to computer programs.

Out side of fiction there is also a trend toward making virtual info “real” and physical. For example http://www.janusvr.com/