Artful Web Designs Push Artistic Limits

Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2007 | 12:16 p.m.

As a canvas, a Web site or a flash player can offer seemingly infinite possibilities for online graphic design. Here are a handful of sites with inventive visuals.

- The World's Highest Web Site: http://tinyurl.com/27ulyj

Created by German artist Jens Meiert, the self-proclaimed world's highest Web site records itself as about 11.77 miles. Measuring the height of a Web site may seem just as impossible as weighing one, but Meiert is playing with the maximum size of a site as allowed by Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers. It's best understood simply by visiting the site.

- "Circoripopolo Goes Artistique": http://users.telenet.be/kixx/

Belgian comic duo Circoripopolo is also expanding its site's design to include your Internet browser. Click on this site and your browser will immediately shrink. You'll first see two pairs of hands squeezing out of a small crack in the otherwise black screen. The duo keep pushing outward until they've successfully expanded your browser. Later, when they explode their large balloon, your browser shakes.

- The Human Brain Cloud: http://www.humanbraincloud.com

Created by Kyle Gabler, the Human Brain Cloud is a giant word-association game that compiles the words most commonly associated with each other. "Selfish," for example, is strongly connected to "me." "Reporter" has a stronger association with "yuck" than journalists would prefer. The more common the association, the larger the bubble graphically representing each word. A similar effect is found at http://www.mike-love.net/. Calling itself a "Genealogy of Influence," this site links writers, artists, philosophers, scientists and mathematicians through their influences. Click on Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, and watch a sea of names populate around him, from Coleridge to Shakespeare.

- Lite Brite: http://www.sfpg.com/animation/liteBrite.html

This is just simply an online version of the classic Hasbro game Lite Brite. It only glows in the dark, though, if you consider your computer screen as "glowing."

- Human-powered Cursor: http://www.1-click.jp/

There are a number of flash programs that follow your cursor around the screen - like, for example, this dog: http://www.motionportrait.com/about/TIdog.swf. But the human-powered cursor by Recruit Media Communications is special. Ten Asian men carry a giant cursor, moving in formation wherever you move your cursor. It looks exhausting.

- LoveHateNYC: http://lovehate.us/

Multimedia artist Rachel Fujita here presents what she calls "a personal love-hate relationship with New York City." With graphics detailing the various neighborhoods of Manhattan, Fujita mimics the multitude of contradictory thoughts and exclamations experienced in the city. Midtown, for example, is mapped in various tones of red, the darker shades representing hateful thoughts, and the lighter shades love. A number of constantly changing sentences play across the screen. One in the dark red section cycles through: "I can't breath!" ... "More sensory overload?" ... "Broadway is overrated!" ... "This is weird."

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DOWNLOAD THIS: Miss South Carolina Spoofs

The confused answer of Miss South Carolina in last week's Miss Teen USA pageant has spread like wildfire on YouTube and other video-sharing sites. Lauren Caitlin Upton, 18, responded to a question about why one-fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a map. Her nonsensical answer had something to do with South Africa and the phrase "such as." Millions have watched it on YouTube, and spoofs or responses to Upton's answer accounted for six of the top 20 most-viewed videos on Tuesday.

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EDITOR'S NOTE - What's your favorite Web site? E-mail AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle at fcoyle(at)ap.org