The web is an experimental, diverse, and creative medium. Web artist Yehwan Song creates anti-friendly, unconventional, and independent websites, attempting to overturn general understandings of web design and subvert user behavior. At the workshop, Yehwan will install her artwork “Aquarium” and invite participants to interact with this piece. Aquarium is a pair of websites that are connected and communicate in real time. Yehwan will discuss how she creates different web–user interactions for Aquarium as well as the technical structure behind the artwork.
Today, web design is fully templatized and user friendly. The concept of “user friendliness” focuses on ease of use above all else. It asks as little as possible of the user. In order to achieve this, most websites use standardized design and interface conventions that do not require the user to learn how to use a new interface; instead, users repeat behaviors that they have been trained to perform. This automatic repetition of action causes people to lose their content awareness.
This workshop will be a space to explore and discuss non-templatized, anti-friendly, and experimental websites. During the workshop, Yehwan will install her artwork—Aquarium—and invite participants to interact with this piece. Aquarium consists of a pair of websites that are connected and communicate in real time. One website shows a deeper, side view of an aquarium, while the other shows the surface of the aquarium. When users touch the surface of one website, they will be able to see their virtual fingers on the other website, as though actually dipping their fingers in a deep aquarium.
While exploring the aquarium, Yehwan will talk about the purpose and technical structure of her artwork. Aquarium will attempt to convert a flat website into a physical, 3D space. Most web users passively and automatically accept flat, square devices (phones and tablets), consequently losing their ability to receive and process other information such as textures and architectural structures. Yehwan has been trying to break this framework and make the web a physical structure, thereby overcoming the flatness of the web. Aquarium is one such trial to meet this end. By using two iPads and constructing a cuboid structure, Aquarium is not limited to a flat surface but is presented on a two-perspective structure. Technically, two websites are connected using a real-time database to enable real-time communication. Real-time databases are used for websites containing data that is constantly changing. This allows any connected device to receives updated data within milliseconds.
