Rhizome
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Tue Mar 20th, 2012 noon
Today at 12pm EST (17:00 CET) Jonas Lund is launching his work Selfsurfing "a Chrome extension that creates a self-surfing, auto-updating clone of my browser in real time," with a 24 hour period of online browsing for you to watch. Lund's "browser has a server extension installed which transmits the current state of [his' browser to a intermediate server, which holds all relevant information." We asked him a few questions about the work in advance of its launch ....
"Selfsurfing," is a Chrome extension that clones your activity online so we can watch in our browsers. To kick off, you'll surf online for the next 24 hours. Are there certain hours that might be more entertaining than others? Will you sneak to another browser for email, Facebook, and other things you might not want to share?
This is the first time I’m forcing myself to surf for 24 hours straight so I’m a bit unsure of what to expect. My guess is that it will be more interesting towards the end when I’ve gone through all my typical resources and I'm faced with a nice fatigue combined with the open endlessness of the web without any specific direction.
The way the extension works is that it clones the tabs of my browser, so if I surf to my Facebook, you will see your Facebook. So in that sense the social network privacy is maintained, but for the duration of the 24 hours Chrome will be the one and only browser.
What inspired this project?
Ever since I made ‘Im Here And There’ I wanted to extend it to focus more on the whole experience of surfing and not just the locations, to create a version of my web and my browsing that comes closer to the original experience.
Each change to my browser is stored in a simple mysql database, so it’s both a continuous broadcast as well as a growing archive of my online activities.
Have any interesting (or embarrassing) events come out of your previous work imhereandthere.com?
One time I got caught watching Grey’s Anatomy on sidereel.com, I think that was the most embarrassing thing ever.
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ed halter