Riot

Alternative web browser

The Tompkins Square riots and the state sponsored enforcement of gentrification in New York’s East Village in the ’90s inspired Riot, an alternative browser that crosses the virtual boundaries in the web. Riot breaks the software-based rules of Internet domains and blends web pages together as users surf from site to site. Playboy.com blends with whitehouse.gov, CNN.com with NPR.org. Visitors surfing with Riot see their own pages merged with pages from other users. Riot was the first and only multi-user browser. Riot revealed the soft territories of the web, enforced by the rules of browser software and domain name servers.

“When the mixtures of banner ads, government reports and personal declarations are taken as a jumbled whole, meaning falls apart. More becomes less.”,
The San Francisco Gate, Glen Helfand, July 22, 1999
Riot was included in the Whitney Biennial, 2002.