The Guggenheim recently sent out a press release. Here is that release,
along with some commentary from the RHIZOME community…

+ + +

Visitors to the Guggenheim this month should have an easier time
orienting themselves even if they arrive from cyberspace. CyberAtlas, a
new interactive feature of the Guggenheim's Web site, offers a series of
maps of cyberspace made at different times from different perspectives.

A visitor who clicks on a location in one of the maps will jump directly
to the corresponding site on the World Wide Web. Instead of disappearing
from view, the map is designed to follow along in the background as the
visitor jumps from site to site, ready to be "unfolded" whenever it is
needed.

The online debut of CyberAtlas features Electric Sky, a geographic map
by Guggenheim Exhibition Coordinator Jon Ippolito, as well as
Intelligent Life, a thematic map by independent curator Laura Trippi.
Electric Sky charts cyberspace as a celestial firmament whose
constellations are electronic networks. Intelligent Life charts
cyberspace as a neural network that connects recent scientific
developments to art, theory, and popular culture. New maps will appear
periodically as part of this ongoing effort to visualize the
ever-changing space of electronic culture.

The CyberAtlas project is designed and curated by Jon Ippolito. The
Guggenheim Museum wishes to thank Mia Hurley for her assistance with the
project.

CyberAtlas can be accessed from the Guggenheim's home page at:

http://www.guggenheim.org

+ + +

Jason McCabe Calacanis was the first to reply:

I just checkout the CyberAtlas website… I like the idea, but the
execution doesn't seem ready for prime time… perhaps i have to high of
an expectation spending most of my time looking at commerical web
ventures, but the map project is simply a large gif file with cut out
close ups… their really is no technology to it… in a magazine the
images might work well, but if you look at things like you get an idea
of what the future of mapping/navigation could be….

on a pure content view i like the idea of mapping out the relationship
of art sites, but the relationships are only lines without
explanation… what would be really interesting is if you explained what
the relationships were, in detail… perhaps even making it personal (ie
John Doe from Razorfish went to school with Jane of ArtProject and they
did a SuperCyberArt project with funding from Razorfish and a grant from
XXXX).

Robbin Murphy wrote:

What I'd like to see are more artist's browser projects like Web Stalker
that demand more involvement by the viewer in constructing their own
maps: http://www.backspace.org/iod

Tina LaPorta added:

As far as visualizing lists of hyper-links–I recommend the jodimap:
http://jodi.org/100/url/

+ + +