Installation and Poster
Reflection
The day I learned about the “Home Sweet Home” theme for our studio exhibition, I was thrilled. This concept instantly resonated with our class explorations of nostalgia, memory, and the digital realm. Setting up the exhibition like a house felt like the perfect way to embody these themes in a physical space. Although it was my first time planning an exhibition and the process was challenging, the theme itself provided an anchor for my work, grounding it in something familiar and meaningful. I knew I wanted my contribution to be both deeply personal and conceptually layered, merging digital and handmade elements to evoke familiarity and longing.
My project, Gaze Beyond the Grid, combines a crocheted lace doily with a video projection, creating grid-like shadows on a white wall. Choosing crochet as a medium was intentional: it’s a repetitive, meditative process that connects to the slow passage of time and the pre-digital era’s craftsmanship. As Monteiro and Barranha explain, “Today, when interaction goes beyond the simple act of clicking, contemporary digital art defies the disembodiment/embodiment paradox, making real and virtual works converge and collide” (2018:11). Crochet became my way to physically connect to memory as a concept—how it’s often fragmented and hazy, yet bound by a longing for an imagined past. Inspired by Bridle’s New Aesthetic (2012), which critiques how digitization detaches meaning from media, I wanted to bring back some of this meaning by projecting a video onto the doily. The resulting pixel-like shadows resemble a computer screen, grounding digital elements in something tangible.
In our class discussions, we frequently explored how digital media evokes nostalgia—an almost mythical yearning for a time that feels both distant and imaginary. This feeling resonated deeply with me, and I sought to bring it to life through the tactile process of crocheting. The crochet doily, in this context, became an object of “waiting”—both in its creation and in the viewers’ experience, as they pause to look out the imagined window. This practice mirrored how memory itself erodes over time, with details becoming blurry and shadowed by the past.
The uncanny feeling often linked to digital media played a significant role in shaping my project. I experimented with creating visuals that felt strangely familiar yet subtly unsettling, a concept that aligns with the imagery on The New Aesthetic Tumblr—a major inspiration for me. In an earlier project, Hacking Hello Kitty, I disassembled an old Hello Kitty clock. Although I had no personal memories connected to this object, breaking it apart felt unexpectedly nostalgic. Its scratches and marks hinted at a hidden history, and dismantling it highlighted the tangibility of memories—something that digital media alone struggles to capture. Through this, I learned that nostalgia can offer comfort while also reminding us of the inevitable decay of the past.
Throughout the semester, my process evolved as I experimented continuously. Watching experimental videos in class introduced me to the “home camcorder” aesthetic but seen in a different light- evoking feelings of strange familiarity. Discussing themes like repetition, the sublime, and the uncanny helped me articulate feelings I’d previously struggled to name. These concepts provided a lens to interpret and communicate emotions like unease and the strange allure of observing digital decay. Learning about the “sublime” aspect of scale, for instance, made me aware of how vast and seemingly endless the digital space is. This realization pushed me to explore memory on a grander scale, highlighting how digital realms can seem both overwhelming and introspective.
The collaborative environment in our studio also influenced my project significantly. Conversations with classmates brought our exhibition to life, and activities like “idea speed dating” helped me generate ideas and feel inspired. Collaborating with Iza on the exhibition’s promotional materials was not only a fun diversion but also essential in helping me reset when I felt hyper fixated on my project (I had been crocheting for days). Observing other students’ interpretations of “home” inspired me to see my piece as part of a larger, shared narrative, where each work contributes to the exhibition’s overall exploration of memory and nostalgia.
If I were to continue developing Gaze Beyond the Grid, I’d love to experiment further with scale, perhaps by creating multiple overlapping doilies that intertwine into a sprawling “monster” of memories. This larger installation could capture the vastness and complexity of digital memories, with overlapping elements that glitch and blend, much like how memories blur together. Adding sensory components, such as scent or sound, would intensify the experience—perhaps through a subtle soundscape or by adding perfume to the yarn, creating a sensory connection to personal memories.
The times when I felt discouraged, our studio discussions about the handmade versus digital dichotomy profoundly influenced my approach to continue and in Week 7, we delved into themes of authenticity and the importance of the handmade, reinforcing my choice to include crochet in my project. Balsom’s insight that “Copying—long a neutral activity—was degraded and devalued due to its close ties to mechanization and standardisation, while objects that evaded the regime of duplicated sameness were exalted as more precious, more human” (2014:70) resonated with me. In a world dominated by mass production, creating something by hand carries an undeniable significance, reminding us of a time when objects held unique stories not bound to pixels but to textures and the time invested in making them.
Ultimately, Gaze Beyond the Grid became a personal exploration of nostalgia, blending handmade elements with digital glitches to evoke what I’d call a “nostalgia itch”—the familiar ache triggered by contrasts. Gaze Beyond the Grid is where the handmade and digital worlds meet, inviting viewers into an “in-between” space, where memories flicker and fade. Through this process, I’ve learned that memory, like the internet, is vast, tangled, and beautifully imperfect— it’s okay to feel weird feelings.
I have had so much fun in this studio <3
References:
- Monteiro, R.X. & Barranha, H. (2018) What Can and Cannot Be Felt: The Paradox of Affectivity in Post-Internet Art. Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts. 10 (1), 3-. doi:10.7559/citarj.v10i1.380.
- Balsom, E. (2014) Against the Novelty of New Media: The Resuscitation of the Authentic. In: O. Kholeif (ed.). You are here : art after the internet . Manchester, Cornerhouse. p.
- Bridle, J. (2012). The new aesthetic. British Journal of Photography, 159(7804), 66–71.
- Gronlund, Melissa (2014). “From Narcissism to the Dialogic: Identity in Art after the Internet.”Afterall, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 4–13, https://doi.org/10.1086/679372.