Cogimator – A Curated Directory of Unique Websites

Patatap is a unique website that transforms your keyboard into a playful audiovisual instrument. Each key triggers a sound effect paired with a colorful animation, resulting in spontaneous compositions of rhythm and motion. 🔗 Patatap.com Created by Jono Brandel in collaboration with the musical duo Lullatone, the project invites users to explore sound and visuals in a fun and accessible way. Every keystroke is like a brushstroke on a digital canvas – instead of paint, you create loops of color and music. ...

Ribbonfarm is an essay archive created in 2007 by Venkatesh Rao. For more than a decade, it was one of the most distinctive places on the internet for long-form, multilayered explorations of culture, technology, management, and society. The project has since been officially “retired,” but its rich archive remains freely accessible and highly influential. Rao described his style as “refactoring perception” – attempts to reframe the way we see and interpret the world. Among the most famous works is the “Gervais Principle”, a series analyzing corporate culture through the lens of The Office. Other essays tackled the attention economy, memetics, internet subcultures, technology, and politics. ...

Techsty is a Polish online magazine launched in 2001, dedicated to electronic literature, digital art, and cyberculture. It is one of the oldest projects of its kind in Poland, serving both as an archive and as an active platform for exploring the transformations of literature and art in the digital age. The magazine features academic articles, reviews, interviews, as well as experimental literary works. Readers can find analyses of hypertext literature, manifestos of e-literature creators, and discussions of projects that merge text with multimedia, code, or interactivity. ...

Urbigenous is an independent website created in the late 1990s that serves as a digital archive of essays, manifestos, and alternative projects exploring culture, philosophy, and technology. It embodies the spirit of the early web – grassroots, experimental, and defiantly non-commercial. The site features both original writings by the author and carefully curated archival materials. Topics range widely: network metaphors, memetics, anarchism, social critique, and reflections on the role of technology in shaping culture. Many of these texts are rare or hard to find today, offering unique insight into the critical discourse that accompanied the rise of the internet and globalization. ...

WindowSwap is a unique website that allows you to look through the windows of people living all around the world. The idea is simple yet deeply moving: with a single click you are transported to a completely different place – it might be Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Paris, a small town in Finland, or a countryside home in India. What you see is exactly what someone else sees every day from their window: a busy street, a quiet garden, mountains, the ocean, or a simple brick wall across the street. ...

Inconvergent is the digital workshop of Anders Hoff – an artist and programmer exploring the boundaries between mathematics, algorithms, and visual art. The site is a collection of generative experiments, interactive essays, and tools that reveal how computational procedures can produce images resembling natural, organic structures. At the core of the project are visualizations created through code. Hoff openly shares algorithms, demonstrating how complex patterns can emerge from simple rules. His works often resemble neural networks, living organisms, or geometric landscapes, while remaining abstract and mesmerizing. ...

Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is an international academic initiative aimed at advancing open access to scholarly knowledge. Founded at the University of British Columbia, the project is now supported by multiple partner institutions. Its flagship achievement is Open Journal Systems (OJS) – open-source software used by thousands of journals worldwide to manage peer review and publish research articles online. PKP also develops other tools, such as Open Monograph Press and Open Preprint Systems, supporting digital distribution of books and preprints. Together, they form an ecosystem that covers the entire publishing workflow: from submission, through peer review, to making content accessible to readers. ...

Rejected Princesses is the brainchild of Jason Porath, blending illustration with history and pop culture. The idea was to create an alternate universe of princesses – not the ones we see in Disney movies, but those who would have been rejected for being “too controversial, dangerous, or politically incorrect.” The site features hundreds of illustrated stories about women from different eras and cultures: warriors, leaders, explorers, and rebels who played significant roles in history yet were often erased from it. Each character is brought to life through bold, comic-style artwork accompanied by well-researched and engaging essays filled with facts, anecdotes, and historical context. ...

🔗 Long Now Foundation is a remarkable organization that promotes long-term thinking – not in years or decades, but in spans of 10,000 years. Founded in the 1990s by Stewart Brand, Danny Hillis, and Brian Eno, it serves as a hub and archive for projects that explore humanity’s role in deep time. The foundation’s best-known projects include: The Clock of the Long Now – a monumental timepiece designed to keep time for 10,000 years, The Rosetta Project – a digital and physical archive of the world’s languages, preserving linguistic diversity for future generations, Seminars About Long-term Thinking (SALT) – an ongoing lecture and discussion series, started in 2003, featuring leading thinkers and made available online. The core idea is that our cultural, technological, and ecological decisions should be guided by consideration of the distant future. The website functions as a repository of ideas and practical projects, covering art, science, philosophy, ecology, history, and speculative futures. ...