On apocalypses, archipelagos, and websites

Spoke on websites, archipelagic internets, & ambient design to more than 2200 people – a bit of a risky, polarizing form to a generalist product design audience. I programmed a custom slide-site, wrote new text & sound, and read it all out like a poem - while also triggering live ambient music.

Centering the way the third world inhabits & appropriates the internet, how explicit the infrastructural is for us, the struggle to be seen — against sweeping, blanket notions of a 'softer' internet, towards the burning, crisis-fueled, apocalyptic internet made by those who labor & suffer & love in it most, by us.

At the end of the talk, I demod an experiment in making an archipelagic webring, a more atmospheric, naturalistic, and chaotic structure to the usual circular webring. Listeners submitted a link, and were whisked away to another website in a sea as a parting gift. Try it yourself!