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CRANK THE WEB - 2001
Crank your own bandwidth.
Exhibitions:1st Prize Winner at the Fourth International Browser Day, March 29, 2001 at the Great Hall at Cooper Union, NYC.
Interface Explorer Conference, October 18 - Nov. 9, 2001, Vienna, Austria.
Transmediale 02, Feb. 5 - 24, 2002, Berlin, Germany.
Media[tion] exhibition, 2/16/04 - 4/12/04 @ Doncaster Museum & Art Gallery, Doncaster, UK.
OBORO, 9/16/06 - 10/21/06 @ Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
ArtLabs: Connectivity Show, 10/20/07 - 11/3/07 @ Sibiu, Romania.
EADI (The European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes)
12th Annual Conference / Exhibition - Global Governance for Sustainable Development, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, 6/24/08 - 6/28/08.
Press:
Included in "Internet Art", by Rachel Greene, Thames and Hudson, 2004.
Crank the Web in the New York Times, April 2, 2001.
BrowserWare Article - from Mediachannel.org, 4/11/01
Finalists Announced - from Internet.com's browserwatch.
Video:
CrankTheWeb.mov (7 MB)
Video Interview with Jonah about Crank The Web from Interface Explorer event in Vienna, Austria (2 MB)
Overview
Crank the Web is a browser that
allows people to physically crank
their bandwidth in order to see a
website. Simply enter a URL, start
cranking, and text and images
appear in the browser window.
Prototype
The idea behind Crank the Web is to combine
ancient forms of automation with today's digital
telecommunications technology. All bandwidth
should be free and everyone should have access
to the fastest speed connection. It is up to you
to physically crank your bandwidth so that your
internet connnection will rely on your personal
strength, not personal wealth.
System
Users type in a URL on the screen and hit
ENTER and a blank IE or Netscape page
appears. The page they entered is read into a
buffer and using the crank, they send a bit of
data at a time to the computer which then
unloads the buffer (containing text, images,
animation, sound, etc..) into the open
window. The page loads according to how
fast they turn the crank. There is an
indication on screen of the approximate
bandwidth speed they are cranking.
Crank The Web installed at the Interface Explorer conference (Vienna, Austria 10/18/2001):
Crank The Web installed at the ArtLabs: Connectivity Show, October 20 - November 3, 2007, Sibiu, Romania:
Crank The Web installed at the IKM installation in Geneva, June 24-27, 2008
