Tench Cholnoky
Large-scale worksExperiments
Tests and research//PIXELMOUTH
NYC-based collectiveAbout
Project Overview
The Web Palimpsest is my second Chrome Extension that seeks to alter the ways different people engage with the web. The extension centers around the concept of a Palimpsest, an object or area that has extensive evidence of or layers showing activity or use. They interest me archaeologically, seeing what layers of new knowledge are built on the foundations of old knowledge. The goal was to create a layered collage-style alternate history of a user’s browser history. On each page visit, the Chrome extension pulls a random piece of text or an image.
The user can then open up the extension as an interactive web page that shows snippets of their browser history, either as an abstract layered palimpsestic collage or sorted by different criteria. Throughout a person’s time browsing the web, various parts of the palimpsest will layer over previous parts, obfuscating their older history with their newer history. As the user engages with the internet, they will slowly develop their palimpsest, creating a unique stamp of how they engage with the web, and telling a non-linear story of their browsing experience.
The interactive web page becomes a user’s new tab or home page, and as a user voyages out into the internet and collects different fragments, they are able to bring those fragments home. The page becomes a living archive of their engagement with the internet and how they choose to navigate the web.
The Web Palimpsest is available for download on the Chrome Store.
The source code can be found on github.