Scan Magazine
| Cover Feature | Wang and Söderström
Can humans ‘co-live’ with the digital world? A conversation with art and design duo Wang & Söderström Copenhagen-based art and design duo Anny Wang and Tim Söderström are renowned for their visualisations of the realm between the digital and the physical. Their living universe of strangely human, but undoubtedly digital forms evades easy definition – as whimsical and familiar as it is unnerving and alien. It might be comforting to consider humans ‘co-living’ with technology as a future reality, but Wang & Söderström argue that it’s already here. So, what does that look like, exactly? And can we stay human in the age of technology? Following their first solo exhibition, Royal Chambers in Copenhagen, we caught up with the artist couple to hear their take. By Lena Hunter
Your work is really on the edge of technology and art. How did Wang & Söderström begin, and what got you where you are today? WANG: We established our studio as a duo in 2016, but our practise was born back during our university studies, when we found this 3D software for making spatial and architectural renderings.
SÖDERSTRÖM: That was when we got the 3D printer, so our creations in the software could become small objects that we could touch. The 3D printer was really a gateway to creativity for us.
We learned the software by ourselves, by watching YouTube tutorials, and we quickly noticed that digital technology and the digital world is shaped by few people, from a narrow demographic and background. We saw so much to explore, and so many ways to do things differently to them, but with the same tools. WANG: It’s not to criticise them, it’s more that they were all subscribing to the same image of what digital is: very sci-fi-driven, very functional and efficient. And so those are also the associations that people in general have. We thought, how can we broaden the aesthetic and the meaning of digital?
On weekends and evenings, we started playing with it – exploring the other tabs and features. We began by making still imagery, then slowly started animating and creating stuff with it. What were you making? What possibilities did you see? WANG: In the beginning, we did a lot of material exploration. There’s no hierarchy in the digital world. You can use really expensive materials, like marble and gold and so on, that are very limited
in the real world, and you can also break all the physical laws.
Still from Rehousing Technosphere by Wang & Söderström.
December 2022
|
Issue 149
|
29