Abstract Browsing is a publication based on the browser plug-in for Google Chrome of the same name conceived by Rafaël Rozendaal and coded by Reinier Feijen in 2016. Activating the plug-in overlays all functional boxes of a web page with full-colored rectangles, stripping the page from any content and turning it into an abstract composition, thus highlighting its diagrammatic structure: “It shows the skeleton of the web. It’s like seeing an X-ray of a building, showing the structural elements. / Web pages are built of many smaller elements, information is organized and categorized. Text, images, tables, things we use every day but are not aware of” (Rafaël Rozendaal, “Notes”).

The plug-in’s twelve bright colors reference the palette of a browser’s developer tool and, once activated, change over time, creating ever-new compositions. Abstract Browsing collects forty screenshots of the artist’s browser while having the plug-in activated. The screenshots are set in different sizes on single and double pages. Along with the abstract contents of the browser window, user interface elements and address fields are also reproduced, revealing the source they were taken from as well as websites that were open in other tabs while taking the screenshot. The sources range from major websites like Gmail, Wikipedia, Facebook, and eBay—which in some cases appear multiple times—to minor websites like actress Zooey Deschanel’s blog and subpages like media artist Jonas Lund’s GitHub page. Thus, the collection also documents a selection of websites visited by Rozendaal. This lends a biographical twist to the study of web design trends at a particular point in time.

The rather poor quality of this print-on-demand publication, with full-colored areas regularly being pixelated or having ink smears, further abstracts the compositions, similar to Rozendaal’s tapestry reproductions of abstract web pages. Both the publication and the tapestries force him to pause and make a selection from the numerous screenshots made: “The real challenge is editing. […] Out of all the files I have, I have to choose which ones become objects. / The physicalization (weaving) brings focus. The software is fast and fluid, textile is expensive and slow. It slows me down, it helps me to pause and reflect” (Rozendaal, “Notes”). In this, Rozendaal’s motivation resembles the web-to-print publications that Paul Soulellis has collected in his Library of the Printed Web and in whose series Printed Web Editions Rozendaal’s Abstract Browsing was published.

Compared to other copies, ours has different, non-glossy paper, indicating that the copies were printed in different places. In addition, our copy has a binding error: two sheets were bound upside down and in the wrong order.