AOL Profile Project
In 2006, scandal erupted when internet giant AOL mistakenly released a database of millions of search queries organized by unique identifiers. Many poured over the information - from researchers interested in sociology to young hackers titillated by the many seedy, uncensored, and intimate search queries.
Upon looking at the data on my own, I was struck by the possibility of reconstructing personal profiles based on the information being searched for, and undertook a small independent project to create fictionalized profile pages using the enormous amount of data. Aside from being a fun and mind-stretching project, I also used this as a chance to test out a novel interface - that of a tight grid of colored squares, which, when hovered over, would rotate and change color at random, and make a call to an external file for the profile information and photo associated with that particular location in the grid.
The project was never completed - manually creating profiles for the 800 squares in the 20x20 grid required more time (and energy) than I was prepared to devote - but even so, I think it succeeds as a piece of conceptual storytelling on the web that takes an interesting look at the hidden truth behind our internet-browsing personae.
