Perihelion Graph

Perihelion is a different way to move through what we collectively know. You start on a topic — any of the millions Wikipedia covers. Around it sit six things it is connected to: a person, a place, a work, an event, an idea. Tap one and it slides to the centre, and six new connections open around it. There is no results page and no ranked list. There is only where you are and where you can go next, and the way back is always on screen. Keep going and the interesting thing happens. Four or five hops in you are somewhere you could never have searched for, having arrived by a path you can still trace. A composer leads to a city, the city to a physicist, the physicist to an idea that turns up again somewhere you did not expect. HOW IT WORKS Nothing is bundled and nothing is invented. Every topic and every connection is read live from Wikidata, the structured database behind Wikipedia,…