Master of Science, February 1997.

This thesis describes dynamic collage -- a tool for organizing interactive visual experiences and browsing through banks of visual data. I initially developed dynamic collages to guide and preview users choices in an interactive movie. Later, the tool turned out to be useful for a variety of World Wide Web presentations, such as on-line shopping catalogs and interactive newscasts.

In the following pages I will:

* describe my journey from non-fiction film to interactive cinema;

* present dynamic collage as an organizing principle for an interactive movie;

* describe in detail the dynamic collage mechanism, from its conception to its implementation in Java;

* describe two experiments that use dynamic collages as their interface: The North End Chronicles (an interactive documentary), and J.C. Penney Arcade (an on-line catalogue);

* present collage as an efficient solution for dynamic information design on the WWW;

* point out possible ways to improve and extend the dynamic collage tool.