Technology

Can You Figure Out What Websites These Are Just by Their Layout?

February 1, 2016 | Elizabeth Knowles

Art gallery displaying abstract images of webpages
Photo credit: Don Lewis. Rafaël Rozendaal, Abstract Browsing, Installation view, Steve Turner, January 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Steve Turner, Los Angeles

Artist Rafaël Rozendaal reimagines popular websites as pieces of art

According to eMarketer in 2013, the average person who uses at least two tech platform to connect with others spends 23 hours per week on email, text and social media. It follows that users should be very familiar with the platforms that they use. In fact, artist Rafaël Rozendaal used these pages as his inspiration for pieces of art.

In 2014, he created a Chrome extension called Abstract Browsing that transforms a website into nothing more than blocks of color. The layout is maintained, but the content is reimagined. Popular websites such as Facebook and Gmail are so familiar that it is fairly easy to figure out which one is represented.

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More recently, Rozendaal took screenshots of some of the websites and made tapestries of them on an early 19th century Jacquard loom for an exhibition at the Steve Turner gallery in Los Angeles.

Rozendaal spent a long time picking each screenshot. According to his website: “He looks for unusual compositions — those that an artist would not have made — and aims to discover ‘weird hybrids of human design and machine optimizing.’ He likens pixels on a computer screen to stitches on a weaving and uses bright colors to achieve maximum impact.”

Do you recognize any of these websites?

15 05 02 Gmail
15 05 02 Gmail
Courtesy of the artist and Steve Turner, Los Angeles
Photo credit: Don Lewis
15 05 05 Twitter
15 05 05 Twitter
Courtesy of the artist and Steve Turner, Los Angeles
Photo credit: Don Lewis

15 05 10 IMDb
15 05 10 IMDb
Courtesy of the artist and Steve Turner, Los Angeles
Photo credit: Don Lewis

15 05 11 Pinterest

15 05 11 Pinterest
Courtesy of the artist and Steve Turner, Los Angeles
Photo credit: Don Lewis
 

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