Wenjing Liu is a graphic designer and creative coder who grew up in Guangdong, China and is currently based in London.
Wenjing studied branding design at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts before participating in the experimental communication programme at the Royal College of Art. His work explores the socio-political effects of digital technology through installation, coding, posters and publications.
The role of a hacker is not just about learning to code or tinkering with technology, it is a metaphor for a more ethical digital production.
— Ruben Pater
Before I trained as a graphic designer, my dream was to become a programmer — the ultimate dream for an internet addict. Many kids my age have grown up with the internet, with countless mobile or web applications occupying their lives. Instagram for design inspiration, Google for answers and TikTok for social networking. These applications shape some of our behaviours and perceptions in silence. We cannot deny that they are already an integral part of our daily lives. Therefore, critically rethinking of these applications and the digital culture that derives from them will be a crucial part of our future lives.
Most of my practices come from my personal experience of surfing the web, but I tried to present them on the basis of a collective experience through further research and exploration. Influenced by “Chindogu”, I believe that criticality and playfulness are not in a binary opposition. I try to employ a playful and accessible strategy to communicate the socio-political effects of digital technologies. At least the audience can have some fun with my works, even if they do not fully understand the deeper idea.
Having fun is crucial.
Pluginism is a digital playground and archive for exploring the creative potential of browser extensions. More importantly, to explore these extensions as tools for dissecting and critiquing the internet landscape.
We use browser extensions somewhat, such as AD Guards, Grammarly and so on, to enhance our browsing experience. Pluginism aren't here to fix problems, but rather to ask challenging questions using this intriguing medium. The uniqueness of it is that it offers the capacity of changing the appearance of specific online content, adding additional information layers, redirecting a viewer to different URLs, or changing browser behaviours.* By blending these capabilities with artistic techniques, like detournement, it can create many fascinating potentialities.
Through learning from different how-to guidelines and sharing their plugins to the gallery, I invite people to critically and creatively explore web technology and media, to reclaim authorship and ownership of new and existing technology, and explore the social-political relationship between human and web technology.
*Code as Creative Medium - Golan Levin
Make Zuch Smile is a browser extension that aims to question the monetization of user data on social platforms.
The browser extension that embeds a Zuckerberg into any web platform is part of Meta. Certain interactions, such as liking, commenting and forwarding on the website, trigger a sound from the cash machine and make your Zuch happier.
AInstagram is a browser extension that invites people to think about a possible future where social media is full of AI-generated content. I use Instagram as my first experimental platform.
The browser extension replaces all original images with the AI-generated version of them. This is achieved by manipulating the ALT attribute of the images, which is a short description of the image, designed to help differently abled users make full use of the content. The browser extension uses the alt texts as prompts to generate images.
Doggle is an online search engine for dogs that aims to question the gatekeeper role of search engines like Google.
Borrowing the theory from 'Pavlov’s dog', I propose that search engines share a similar training process as the experiment. Search engines provide highly customised and 'tasty' results based on the user’s search history, location and language. By manipulating the results, they create a dreamlike filter bubble for users and an instinctive connection between search engines and users’ search behaviour.
The extension is a modified version of the original website developed around a reward system. For each search query, users are rewarded with a 'Good Boy' positive reinforcement and a feed of dog-related moving images.
Originl Website: https://www.doggle.day
