HTMLdna

From Rhizome Artbase
2003
Description

HTMLdna is an application that interprets a website's HTML code and transforms it into a horizontal progression of rectangles, similar to scientific, visual representations of genetic sequences.

Rhizome staff
2021

HTMLdna is a server-side application that aims to produce a particular visual effect re-interpretating the HTML code of web pages. After you have defined the URL of the web page you want to parse, HTML retrieves that page and translates every character into its ASCII code. Then HTMLdna applyes to the created temporary data set a simple algorithm that defines properties (position, size and color) for shapes to display in the output page. The final result is an univocal horizontally sequence of rectangles that seems to represent the genetic code af the parsed page. Like DNA for people, HTMLdna is different for different pages, but it gives always the same result for the same page. Scrolling horizontally the HTMLdna output page, you will have a creative representation of web content, a simple different point of view for HTML source code. This could be the genetic code of an HTML page.

Riccardo Zanardelli
22 December 2003
Metadata
Variant History
outside link
static files
22 December 2003
cloning
Rhizome staff