The System
Credits
Interactive Web Art, Database / System
2026
i) Introduction
Perception Anchor is a read-write database realized as a participatory web artwork that allows users to experience a mode of recollection, in which people new to their surroundings map their isolated past memories onto immediate geographical context.A perception anchor refers to an urban granule—a number, a word, or a visual form—that acquires personal significance when a newcomer recognizes in it a literal correspondence with an episodic memory from elsewhere. The database then takes numbers as its indexing keys: ubiquitous indices in the organization of modern life compacting places and identities to traceable records. Extending Kristopher's previously published work, Boulevard, The Word We Got Used To (2026), a photographic and literary investigation of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, the website begins with displaying 227 street-number plaques as its initial records. Each number serves as a search key, retrieving records containing matching digits queried from Overpass API and the Internet Archive's search API and visualizing them as interconnected blocks in columns for users to navigate.
While clicking into one record from another, visitors can anchor their own episodic memories to any existing record. A server-side system manages these read–write operations, storing user posts in a persistent database and keeping the shared interface up to date. In the acts of establishing narrative threads of perception anchors, the users make legible how people construct a continuous sense of being in the face of geographical ruptures.
ii) Site
www.perception-anchor.comiii) Interface
iv) Demo Video
User Scenario #1 - Yi’s StoryA Demostration of How One User Navigates and Contributes to Perception Anchor Database
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