INPUT FIELDS FOREVER: Roots
By Ursula Endlicher, 2019

HTML-based animation. Runs best on desktop in Safari.

"INPUT FIELDS FOREVER: Roots" is a procedural narrative of two superimposed systems – HTML pull-down menus and roots on a forest floor – caught in an endless loop on the cusp of intercommunication. Taking the user out of "user input", pull-down menus are answering their own questions.

Web-based pull-down (or drop-down) menus usually unfold with a variety of options for the user to choose from. In this project a series of typographic symbols such as "= = ="" or "o o o" are offered instead, representing the microscopic view into the layered structure of roots. Different forms and shapes of the root's cell types become the communication between pull-down menus in their automated conversation with each other - and without the user's input.

"Roots" is part of the ongoing series INPUT FIELDS FOREVER (2015–) that reflects on Web-based input forms; “freed” from their usual format of data collection, they become visual and poetic containers creating new spaces between digital and natural systems.

The project was shown at the online exhibit, "The Burrow", The Wrong Biennial, 2019.