Wikiwalk
A semi-interactive digital installation that lets you passively explore lateral connections between encyclopedic entries from Wikipedia. Like a real walk, it can be educational, medititative, or boring.
Wikipedia community rules require the first sentence (the headline) of each article to provide an informative, neutral, and holistic summary of the subject matter. Often, because that headline is so broad, it contains links to the most salient related concepts to the topic at hand. As such, each headline is a compound sentence that follows a predictable format, adding a formally rigid but substantively rich corpus of text. This makes each sentence in this piece feel structurally familiar despite the wide range of possible subject matter.
The concept was born out of an interest in exploring the underlying data model of a crowdsourced encyclopedia, which, unlike other repositories of information is not subject to a top down organizational system. Articles such as 'Lists of Lists of Lists' are a good example of moments where the typical structure of Wikipedia is undermined by the preferences of the editorial community.
How it works: Start by searching for an article and watch as it traverses each article headline, one by one. The next article is automatically selected based on on the first available link in the headline being rendered, resulting in a 'poem' of concepts that tend to get broader over time. It runs for 10 articles before pausing. While it can technically run indefinitely, you tend to run into several recursive loops, and most walks end in the articles for Physics [link], Philosphy [link], or Everything [link].
As an aside, here are some of my favorite Wikipedia articles of all time.
Here is a video of me showing it to some people at Wordhack.