nub question - scripting and extreme amplification

Hi. So this is my ‘hello world’, and I know making my first post a question is a bit of a leech move, buuut…
I’m interested in the idea of taking amplification/compression to an illogical extreme. Currently I’ve been having fun manually splitting tracks at every zero point I could find and amplifying every chunk, effectively forcing as uniform as possible a -0db level across the board, without actually causing clipping. Initial results are… entertaining…, but it’s a long manual process.
So, my actual questions:

• Is this kind of amplification-ad-absurdam an idea that already exists?
  
  
  
• If so, does it have a name (apart from bloody 'orrible), so I can look into it better?
  
  
  
• If not, could it conceivably be achieved through scripting in Audacity by a coding dilettante?

You could run the “Limiter” effect a few time on the same audio, with extreme settings.

Some settings to try:
Type: Hard
Input Gain Left: 10
Input Gain Right: 10
Limit to: -10
Hold: 1
Make Up Gain: Yes

To repeat the effect: “Ctrl + R”

Thanks, Steve, that seems very promising! I’ll do a comparison test and see.
I think the in-program route is going to be a more practical direction for me to have a go at - Initial reading into scripting in audacity looks like there’s more dev than is practical for my skill level. I’ve gotten as far as having mod-script pipe successfully enabled, but I hit a hard wall at “actually knowing a scripting language”.

That is magnificent. It appears to be identical to what I’ve been achieving manually, at least as far as AU’s waveform view, and more importantly, my ears is/are concerned. I forget how quickly this program moves - until this eveninghours ago, I was still running 2.1.1 and the difference between updates is BAWSS - a DELIBERATE distortion effect!

This HyperExpand* plugin does that. ( * badly named : it does extreme compression, not expansion ).

Great tip - Thanks Treb, I’ll check it out!