Maggie Chang

Maggie Chang
I'm a creative technologist, designer, and artist using digital technologies as carriers for both poetics and function through interaction, generative design, metaphors, and performance. [...]

My work reflects on how the ecology of humans, tools, and environment continuously shape each other. Using frameworks of speculative design, I create alternative technological and social narratives to reimagine the possibilities for the tools that we use and the infrastructures that we inhabit in the present. [...]

I studied sculpture with a concentration in Computation, Technology, and Culture (CTC) at the Rhode Island School of Design. Inspired by the notion of a website being "a shifting house next to a river of knowledge", I see my own website as evolving snapshots of my growing practice, as some projects speak more directly to my current inqueries while others sediment on this interface.

are.na
maggiechangjx [at] gmail [dot] com

I'm a creative technologist, artist, and designer interested in exploring systems of interaction and generation, metaphors, myth-making, worlding, etc...

Desire Paths of Language
Website Github
2023
This is an online environment where people can make sentences and poems together. In the writing mode, one can write a whole or partial sentence by clicking and stringing the exisiting words on the website. The written phrases are stored on the column on the left. In the editing mode, one can edit the existing phrases by adding two additional words to the end of the phrase. The added words will then appear as new word options on the website. Every once in a while, some existing words will disappear as options. All the existing words and written phrases are collectively stored on the backend, allowing the environment to continuously propagate.
localhost:8000
Rapsberry Pi-hosted website attached to light, temperature, and sound sensors; laser cut plexiglass box
Github
2022
localhost:8000 began by asking how technology can be better connected with the natural environment. Hosted on a Raspberry Pi attached to sensors that detect the temperature, brightness, and volume around it, the website reflects these changes in real time through its design and accessible content. In response to the ecological impacts brought by data centers,this project embraces shifts in locality and encourages a more holistic view of the internet.

This is the first iteration of the project, with the working server and website built in 6 weeks. A new web interface is currently in development.
Mementogenesis
Exploratory visual worldbuilding using Blender, miscroscopy, and AI
2023-ongoing
Mementogenesis currently embodies a series of visual research stemming from a speculative narrative in which human DNA becomes the only storage for all data and memory. It imagines a probable future where conventional data centers proves to be too environmentally costly to maintain, while existing research on DNA storage becomes widely adopted. Considering the social influences of the computer as it migrated from military contexts to our homes, the narrative imagines a reality in which technology and biology becomes increasingly entangled.
The current visualizations include:
- →Family Tree of Twins
  Blender renderings and animation
- →Twin Modules
  Procreate, Adobe Illustrator
- →Microscopy, Mutation, Language
  Microscopy of broken down cheek cells; image generation with Midjourney and RunwayML; Figma, Procreate, and Blender renderings
Aerial Witnessing
Speculative mapping
2023
A series of maps made in relation to a solar geoengineering experiment in Northern Sweden. Focusing on the different perspectives present in the context of technological determinism and climate change, these comparative maps speculate the different points of views involved in conducting and protesting against the experiment, including that of the geoengineering lab, the local indigenous population, and the air itself. This project was made in collaboration with Miriam Lellek and Matters of Activity, as one component of a larger exploration and exhibition around the topic of air.
Cyberfeminism Index Panel
Performative reading and panel talk
2022
Together with Jon Chenand Vincent Li, we hosted a panel conversation with designer, researcher, and educator Mindy Seu, in dialog with journalist, producer, and editor Marisa Mazria Katz and designer Libby Marrs.

As a part of the Cyberfeminism Index Book Tour, Mindy gave a performative reading of the Cyberfeminism Index, and was later joined by the panelists in a conversation around the dynamics within holding cross-disciplinary practices as creatives.
Birth by Pixels
Video
2020
A story of a creature that is born inside the screen and their attempt at navigating the world around them.

This video contains a sample of "A Little Noise in the System" by Pauline Oliveros courtesy of Table of the Elements, and "Suiren" by Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster & Panaiotis courtesy of The Orchard Music on behalf of New Albion Records. Environmental images are sourced from Google Earth.
Through extensions and modulations I hear my body
Experimental sound performance and video
2020
Pure Data sound programming with Teensyduino
Projected Land, Projected Being
Performance with video projection, music, and steel
2019
To the pace of music, the performer carries the steel sculpture structure as she attempts to travel through an ever-shifting landmass projected on and beyond her body. Throughout her journey, she treats the steel structure as a tunnel, playground, chair, and eventually a shelter.

The projection also creates a doppleganger--the performer's and steel structure's shadows. The performer continuously gazes at her shadow as she traverses the virtual land, and gradually abandons her physical attachment to her structure in service of her shadow.
Sculpture and video performance
2019
Performance | pər-'fȯr-mən(t)s
: an act of presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment
: the action or process of performing a task or function
Oxford Languages
Video essay
2020
This video essay questions the conventional method of recording time and the relationship between time and labour through the consumption of a pear.
Book and magazine design
2018
A handbook that provides a small origin story and instructions for Mahjong, a four-player tile-based game that originated from China.
Website
2019