netomat is a web browser that takes visitors for a ride into an unexplored internet. Unlike traditional web browsers, which retrieve only predefined web content and rely on the model of the page, netomat engages a different internet -- one that is alive and unpredictable. In response to words and phrases typed in by the viewer, netomat interacts with the internet to retrieve text, images and audio, which flows onto the screen. Using an audio-visual language designed specifically to explore the unexplored internet, netomat reveals how the ever-expanding network interprets and reinterprets cultural concepts and themes.
Visitors enter a netomat theater where they are surrounded by a collage of streaming images, text, animations, voice and music triggered by a series of inputs. Visitors can then transverse the internet's data structure by selecting both the inputs and steering the visual flow of the information.
In traditional browsers typing the word “Microsoft” into the browser window would commonly result in displaying Microsoft’s official web site or providing a list of links to Microsoft related content.
Submitting the same query to the netomat browser would trigger a stream of text and pictures from Microsoft’s official web site as well as images, text, animations and sounds from other unrelated publishers. The resulting stream would contain official Microsoft material alongside caricatures of Bill Gates, sound-bites and jokes about Microsoft and other diverse commentary.
netomat was first shown at Postmasters gallery in NYC in 1999. For the Data Dynamics show at The Whitney Museum of American Art in 2001 a special version of the netomat browser was created to enable simultaneous input from two different users.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/06/cyber/artsatlarge/24artsatlarge.html
http://archive.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1999/06/20473