You know how you debug some CSS by putting borders / outlines / backgrounds on your elements? How the dev tools inspector highlights their boundaries, and you see that everything is a box? This is that, on gallery walls.
Rafaël Rozendaal makes all sorts of web-based art, and I’ve written about the possibilities of HTML art before. But what caught my eye were the tapestries created by abstracting interfaces of popular websites.
He made this browser extension to generate colorful boxes for elements on a webpage, then turned them into huge, tangible art.
“This is what I look at all day—my inbox, social media, the feeds. I want to be honest about modern life; we look at our inboxes much more than we look at mountains or forests. Apparently browser windows are more fascinating than real windows.”
The use of Jacquard is also a nod to its place in computing history alongside punch cards, which he mentions in his notes.
I love how this all weaves neatly together.
All the images in this post are of Twitter. See also: Marc Hemeon did an oil and graphite painting of the Google Search UI; while Diana Valeanu made surrealist illustrations that break away from the corporate memphis fad dominating sites and apps right now.
“In a digital era, we sometimes feel the need to interact with something more human that will make us appreciate both the beauty and the imperfection of something made by hand.”
— Diana Valeanu