Are We Still Surfing?
Exhibition Identity | Web Design
“Are We Still Surfing?” reframes the idea of surfing as a metaphor for agency in the digital world. Early internet culture imagined users riding waves of information, but today’s algorithmic interfaces often leave us scrolling passively instead of navigating with intention. This identity system builds on Pioneer Works’ modular framework to visualize that shift—using glitches, layered windows, and fragmented typography to question how digital structures shape presence, emotion, and disconnection across print, web, and space.
Modular TypeThe modular type is deliberately irregular and avoids forming a perfect pixel grid. Each unit behaves like a drifting data fragment, creating letterforms that feel partially aligned and partially lost. The typography reads as information in transit, capturing the instability and fragmentation that define digital identity.
Posters SeriesPosters use coarse pixelation to frame identity as unstable data rather than fixed portraiture. Faces and interfaces dissolve into raw information blocks, reflecting how our digital selves are constantly compressed, fragmented, and reassembled. Stacked browser windows amplify this instability, visualizing the lag, recursion, and displacement that define online presence today.
PostcardsPostcards isolate browser-like phrases such as “HELLO” and “ARE YOU THERE?” within minimal compositions, recontextualizing digital greetings in physical space. The use of the modular type reinforces the system-generated nature of communication.
Brochure DesignThe brochure materializes the logic of the infinite scroll. Its accordion-fold structure turns digital flow into a tactile sequence, with each expansion mimicking a browser window being opened. Overlapping grids and clipped frames echo how online narratives break, loop, and recombine as we navigate our digital identities.
TicketsThe ticket treats the exhibition space as a browser you can step into. Seat numbers are formatted like hyperlinks—turning the URL into a physical coordinate and highlighting how digital protocols now mediate even our entry into real-world spaces.
Website
https://editor.p5js.org/xhou1/full/B0QL-ntdDThe website simulates a system on the edge of failure. Layered windows and recursive tabs create an experience that resists smooth navigation, exposing delay and overload as part of the interface itself. It becomes a study of digital friction, questioning whether online identity is shaped by intention or by the systems that contain us.
Spatial DesignThe spatial design introduces a deliberate glitch into the real world: the blue sidewalk sign functions like a physical BSOD popup, interrupting the street the way an error window interrupts a screen. Inside, browser-scale projections turn the gallery walls into an inhabitable interface, collapsing the boundary between system and site.
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