The term meta-matic comes from Swiss neo-dadaist Jean Tinguely who created mechanical sculptures that automatically generated "art". The concept of a machine capable of autonomously generating art/ideas/compositions - viewpoints - has been a major influence in our re-thinking the browser concept. The end result of analysing alt.browsers, reading about the implications of broadband and thinking of ways to make software more personal and aesthetic is our version of meta-matic, like its muse also called meta-matic.

The theme for the 3rd international browser day is broadband. Not only does the arrival of broadband brings about the need to re-invent the browser but it also creates the need for repurposing existing content for the new broadband browsers (think iTV). Our meta-matic concept goes beyond rethinking the browser, it presents a new way to visualize and hear content as well as a completely new way to interact with content. Meta-matic takes the themes of re-inventing the browser and repurposing content and context of use to the extremes.

The user of meta-matic is a "data-artist"; With meta-matic browsing transcends banal navigation: throught a symbol system it becomes an audiovisual creative process. The symbol system that makes up a meta-matic comes from the user. In the meta-matic the user accesses and retrieves data through audiovisual interactive views represented by the user's personal symbols.

The meta-matic takes the users symbol and "subject" or "keyword" or "data location" - a domain address not a page - and proceeds to encode data and meta-data about structures associated with the given subject. It does this visually or auditively with the given symbol(s) creating patterns and constructing shapes that convey the richness and relative importance of the subject being represented. The "data-artist" has the freedom to reconstruct the view; each view - meta-matic - is a composition that can be re-composed endlessly.

With meta-matic the concept of browser is transformed from a frame into an information space to a user configurable platform for representing, repurposing and interacting with all kinds of content be it on a network, an personal computer or around us in wireless "intelligent " environments of the future.