The WWW-project "HyGrid" by Ed Stastny is based on nothing more than a small image. Everyone can create their own picture which is then loaded onto the server. This creates an every changing grid - the new images grow out of the old ones.

The "HyGrid" was born one night at a coffee shop in the city of Omaha, Nebraska, USA, as I scribbled in my sketchbook. The basic idea was to create a dynamic growing linear navigateable collaborative artwork with interlocked squares. Each square was to build off of the side of another square and, in turn, three more squares were to be built off of the new square. After only a few generations, the result would be a strange hypertextual path of images that you could navigate.

The process was initially called "tri-linear gridding". "Tri-linear" because it was sequential and semi-linear in sets of three branches, and "gridding" because the base-square idea was built off of some of my other collaborative projects, "GRID" and "Infinite Grid". The hope was to make the "HyGrid" automatic, fun, simple, flexible and web-specific.

"HyGrid's" engine is a CGI Perl script. It's soul consists of a growing roster of eager artist participants from around the world(wideweb). I started the script in December of 1995. Once I began to think about the project, I couldn't get the idea out of my head. I would think myself to sleep every night trying to envision the methods and forms the "HyGrid" could manifest. It was important for the "HyGrid" to be easy to participate in, a pleasure to browse and easy to maintain. These factors, more than anything, shaped the project.

Browsing the "HyGrid" is fairly simple. Presented with one of the many display patterns available, you will see a set of 5 or more squares. Each square is created by a separate artist and all squares are intended to flow as seamlessly as possible into their neighbors. By clicking on any square, you will be presented with a new pattern of squares, this time with the square you clicked on as your center, or base, square. You will notice that going "up and right" doesn't present you with the same square as going "right and up". This is the hyperdimensionality of the project rearing it's beautiful head. Each square exists on its own "plane", so to speak. It is impossible to easily represent the "HyGrid" in any other medium. It is built for the World Wide Web.

While browsing, you'll run across a few different types of squares. The art-squares, of course, are the focus of the project. These are squares submitted by participating artists. The "unreserved" marker square indicates that that specific square on the "HyGrid" has not been reserved and is open for creation. To reserve that square, a participant needs merely click on it and fill out the short reservation form supplied. Once a square is reserved, it will be marked as such and browsers will see a "reserved" square in its place. The final type of square on the "HyGrid" is the "void" square. A "void" square is used to mark a segment of the "HyGrid" that, by its location behind an unfinished square, isn"t active. These "void" squares are used only to fill out unrepresented squares on the bigger pattern configurations.

On a purely artistic level, the patterns provide the altered perspective that's needed to appreciate the "HyGrid's" sprawling chaos. The "HyGrid" grows itself. For the first two months, participants could only ADD a square to an open space on the "HyGrid", effectively adding three new sides from which others could build. As the program matured, the ability to create "weirdlinks" or "wormholes" on the "HyGrid" was installed. These "weirdlinks" allowed a user to combine any number of their reserved spaces into one, provided the conditions were right. In this way, they could create a new square that acted as a bridge between two, three or FOUR squares.

The "HyGrid" was now MORE impossible to render in any other medium. This also gave the "HyGrid" mortality. No longer was it destined to go on into infinity, constantly growing. There now exists the possibility that the "HyGrid" can cinch itself off by using up all available open squares. The "HyGrid" can become closed, like some fantastic digital moebius strip. It is my opinion that this will actually never happen as long as participants are able to create single-link and double-link squares. Single-links create 3 new sides from which to build (they plug-up one and provide three). Double-links don't create any new sides, but they don't take away any either (they plug-up two, but provide two more).

Creating "HyGrid" squares is easily an artform unto itself. Techniques and styles vary greatly among participants. Some like to be extremely vigilant in their referentiality, they will go back to "HyGrid" pieces more than five generations back, often to the origin square, and include visual elements from that square into their new piece.

The "HyGrid" became public in December of 1995. As of April 30, 1996, there are over 30 participants and nearly 400 individual pieces. I'm very proud of "HyGrid" and what it's become. "HyGrid" is a growing project and has no intention of stopping any time soon. Future upgrades include drumloop music linked to every square, allowing new songs and beats to be created by merely cruising through the "HyGrid". VRML output is also being looked at, to allow some idea of how a HyGriddish structure would look in three-dimensions.

If nothing else, "HyGrid" illustrates the mysterious rigors of relation, evolution and perspective in a way that even an artist can understand.