wwwrb, by Hiroki Obara, is a large cylinder display device for browsing the Web.

[wwwrb provides omni-directional web browsing experiences.]

The device connects to the Internet and fetches Flash, image and text files based on certain time-varying constraints as well as users’ keyword search queries. It then shows the fetched information on the cylinder display and reads relevant text information with a synthesized voice.

Obara was inspired by a music box, which he thinks is the most classic loop sequencer device. So, like a music box, wwwrb continues to change in realtime. He describes the device as a “tower of information.”

The surface of the cylinder display is made of a semi-transparent polypropylene film and tracing paper. The internal LCD projector has a super-wide-angle lens attached to it.

[system configuration.]

He thinks time is very important to the design of this device. Most web browsing experiences are constrained by the static nature of pages: we jump to a (static) page and stop for a while, then jump to another and stop, and so on. This constraint influences the way we experience time while browsing the Web. With this work, he explores how different time restrictions create and influence the people around it.