Tree- on perceiving web spaces

Tree is a program that visualizes an algorithm within a HTML page, specified by the user, and then simulates real space, by constructing a number of digital trees placed in an artificial forest within the sketch. Tree accesses source data of a web page through it's URL and transforms the syntax into a tree structure. If I understood the applet correctly, a tree is a representation of a page that is linked off of the original URL that you request to be visualized, then the HTML code that is linked to each of these pages is detected and displayed as a tree like algorithm in the trunk and branches.

I really appreciate the translation between a representation of a navigational space that we are used to seeing online in a web page to something we see every day as a navigational experience, a forest. HTML as a scripting language, has no real depth or space perception when you decipher it, but it bears the ability to take on a new form when examined on the web. I really like the concept, I like the aesthetics and visualization conception, yet I find that it is a little difficult to really understand how the applet is working because of the complexity and scale of the sketch. There is a lot of data being analyzed in a small area, and because of the way that the trees end up overlapping one another so that the visualization looks quite realistic it is hard to determine what really is going into each algorithm. There are small labels at each branch showing what text was visualized but it is very hard to read. If the piece had not been presumably created to be slightly personal, as the search engine allows each user to type in their own URL the detail would probably be overlooked and each little tag would not really be read. But I would assume, as I did, the user would want to know what was being visualized as it came directly from source code that they wrote themselves. Other than that small problem I think the piece is very successful.

I was initially really attracted to the piece because of the interesting aesthetics it is a very attractive sketch. After looking at the amount of data visualisations that we have been in the last few weeks, I feel for myself a piece of this nature is successful when it works on it's own as an image, separate from the data, something visually appealing that attracts the user, not because of the data set but solely because of the graphics. Then when the user is able to interpret the piece as well in terms of the figures that it is representing, then is goes beyond whet the user was expecting.

you can try out the applet here:
http://www.texone.org/tree/tree.php?id=applet