Software Realtime 3D
Single channel projection
Single channel projection with web interface
Dual channel passive stereo projection with web interface

This project received initialisation funding as a commission for the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts UK (NESTA) gallery.

Exhibitions

Choose Your Filter!, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Feb 25

MAAP in Singapore, Oct 04

Surface Browser (solo show), Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Jul 04 (3D at opening. Catalogue Essay (revised for IMA and ACMI) by Zoe Butt

2004: Australian Culture Now, Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne, Jun 04 (inst.)

Switch Media, Chiang Mai, Apr 04

NESTA site, online, Jun 03

Hand Held (solo show), The Depot, Brisbane, Jun 04

Presentations:
Straight Out of Brisbane, Brisbane, Dec 03
electrofringe, Newcastle, Oct 03
re.code, The Farm, Brisbane, Mar 03

Still from Surface Browser, Tim Plaisted 2003, 2004

Surface Browser

Tim Plaisted 2003, 2004, 2025

Surface Browser presents the cumulative experience of net surfing as a deluge of images flowing into viewer perception. The software uses browser conventions (address bar, image search, gen AI prompt) as entry points to a spatial internet. It can run as a stand-alone app, gallery installation with audience input and/or run autonomously based on inputs relevant to the location. It renders the imagined virtual as a liquid space, remapping the images of the net into an environment that pulls you in, to then explore and traverse endlessly.

Essays, rationale, references and thanks below.

Images

Surface Browser Capture Surface Browser Capture Surface Browser Capture

Image Search "Art News" (and BW version)

Browsing Site "Wired"

Installation shot 2004: Australian Culture Now, Australian Centre for the Moving Image

Movies

Surface Browser Capture

Sequence 1: Automatic browsing: image search followed by boxc site (15 seconds)

Surface Browser Capture

Sequence 2: Automatic browsing: News images (7 seconds)

Surface Browser Capture

Sequence 3: Current work (with test image). (43 seconds)

Movies encoded in Quicktime MPEG4.

Credits

Surface Browser
Tim Plaisted 2003, 2004, 2025
Ryan Hodge - Original Application Framework Design, Rendering Programmer
Ivan Shuba - Programmer in charge of updating codebase (2024)
Nick Kaltner - Original Network Programmer

Essays

Catalogue Essay [+] Show inline (revised for IMA and ACMI) by Zoe Butt

Catalogue Essay for Choose Your Filter!, ZKM coming.

Rationale

Popular evocations of technology converged in the eighties and nineties on the idea of cyberspace to represent the time and space inside the network and to encapsulate images of a data-centric, technological future. With the roll-out of internet technology beyond institutions to the public, many early metaphors related this to water: web surfing, streaming media and data pipes, with the mediated experience often being far from fluid!

The piece looks at manifesting the virtual as this (blue) liquid/visceral space. It works on the level of the imagination (the location of understanding of the virtual)* and experience rather than as a representative data visualisation. I was interested in representing the experience of browsing the internet, exploring ways of looking at the pages and images which give them depth and a way to explore their surfaces. In this way, the solids representing pages can be seen as a way to give volume back to the millions of body images which make up so much of internet network traffic.

* Ideas of manifesting the virtual draw on Massumi's writings.

Key technologies

Java - Cross-platform programming language.
OpenGL - Cross-platform standard for 3D rendering and 3D hardware acceleration.
GL4Java, JOGL- OpenGL binding library for Java.

Other Work in the Field

Browser Gestures, Mark Daggett, 2001 (Browser intervention)
REWOB Screensaver, Hisayoshi Tohsaki, 2000 (Image montage from net traversal)
Netomat, Maciej Wisniewski, 1999 (Experimental browser)

Related:
3D Visualisation of information: Hot Sauce - Apple, IRIS/IRIX file system - SGI (both mid 90's)
3D environments and Virtual Reality - also see VRML and 3D games patches Quake, Half Life

Thanks

Thanks to the Maria Stark and The National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts UK, Ryan Hodge, Nick Kaltner, Zoe Butt, Switch Media, Melinda Rackham and the team at ACMI, VR Solutions, The Tourists, Mathew Fletcher and Keith Plaisted.