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Art in the digital domain has created numerous new interfaces, new types of software, and new
networks. The Web Stalker was one of the first internet applications not designed by technicians, but
by artists. It is a unique example of artists re-visualizing data-space at a deep level.
The Web Stalker is a new type of "browser" that offers a completely different interface for moving
through pages on the web. The Web Stalker takes the idea of the conventional visual browers and
turns it on its head. In a poetic act of subversion, it breaks the routine of the Internet's com/edu/net/org
suffix adressing schemes.
The user opens a URL, and then watches the Stalker spitting back the HTML source of the chosen
page. In a parallel window the program exhaustively maps each page linked from that URL,
exponentially enlarging the group of scanned pages and finally pushing an entire set of interlinked
pages to the user.
The pages are never displayed as they are in a conventional browser (like in the Netscape Navigator),
but diagrammed or mapped in a deep, complex hyxpertextual relation.
Matthew Fuller in cooperation with Simon Pope and Colin Green.
 http://www.backspace.org/iod/
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EXHIBITION