Forest of Imagined Beginnings.

Abstract

Vicky Isley & Paul Smith (aka boredomresearch) researched the potential for manipulating forum and BLOG technologies to encourage a more contemplative and rewarding experience. In FOIB (http://www.boredomresearch.net/forest) online environment users explore a landscape approach to managing and navigating the changing space of an online forum. boredomresearch developed new interactive generative software to create tree structures that recreate the decrepit appearance of fruit trees seen in Japanese Edo Period Paintings (1600-1868) and a 2D renderer that displayed a stylized graphic representation of these tree structures. In this environment you can navigate through the forest and users can embed their own messages on selected trees which get permanently stored within a MySQL database. This online navigatiable environment creates a spatially oriented approach to allow alternatives to our established data navigation that respond more intimately to our inherent ability to return to and navigate a remembered space.