Trivial Pursuits book cover

Trivial
Pursuits

Trivial Pursuits is a record of every Wikipedia page I visited from 2017 to 2023, collected and transformed into a thick, printed book. This was my way of creating a diary—not through writing, but by tracing the concepts and ideas that sparked my curiosity over time.

Book spine Heritage page
Cover visual Internal page Marfa page

From Browsing to Book

The project started with my browser history, which I saved over the years. By processing the data with custom tools, I turned it into something tangible. The first part of the book lists all the pages I visited, organized by date, like a timeline of the ideas I've explored.

Diary pages
Mescaline page Handmaid page
Full list Affective page Phonebook layout

A Data-Driven Approach

In the second part, I analyzed the data to uncover patterns and connections, using advanced tools such as sentence-transformer models and dimensionality reduction via UMAP.

Hierarchical clustering further structured the information into nested layers of categories and subcategories, each level illuminating a different facet of my journey.

Methodology diagram
Share visualization Distribution
Categories Sections overview Dendrogram
Scatterplot

A Map of Interests

To make the connections more vivid, I created a map resembling a geographical chart, based on a scatterplot built using the models.

Each area represents different domains of knowledge, akin to continents and islands, showing how ideas relate to each other. This map, also printed as a poster, serves as a centerpiece for exploring these connections.

Full map visualization
Cultural region Food and plants region
Diary section Endpaper
Map detail Overview Book thickness
Four Mail I Ching postcards in a 2×2 grid
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