Nami Kim is a Rotterdam-based web publisher who attempts to bring more human aspects such as sentiments and emotions into the digital culture, especiall the web context. Every few week she is publishing an essay and a web experiment on her publishing platform 'User Sentimental eXperience'. Through this continual practice, she explores the realm of potential experimental web publishing, questioning the current digital interface culture. She believes that the user experience, which is a pervasive design term, should be more comprehensively explored, not just being understood an efficiency-oriented design mechanism. Her question ultimately lies on understanding and expanding the user agency and autonomy in the digital culture. She also embraces the value of collaboration with other artists and designers during the process of enriching her practice.
Issue5. Thank You, Garden - Here is a link: https://thankyougarden.usersentimentalexperience.net/thankyougarden/
From September to December 2022, I participated a residency program Distributed of Web (P2P Festival) hosted by C/O Berlin and an artist Taeyoon Choi. Answering the urgency for a decentralised, more caring, and intimate internet, 14 artists over the world were invited to the program. I and a media artist Eloisa Guerrero created an experimental webzine Thank You, Garden for the festival, manifesting that it can be a communal hub where the artists who care about the discourse share their ideas, knowledge, and gratitude with each other. It curates projects of fellow residents, as well as Thank You letters that they exchanged.
As a part of the project, I and Eloisa held a hand-made webzine-making workshop on the 10th Dec at C/O Berlin. Documentation can be found in a section of the garden. (https://thankyougarden.usersentimentalexperience.net/thankyougarden/P2P_Zine_toolkit/doc.html)
We led an HTML&CSS skill-sharing session, and participants created their own garden webpages with a toolkit that we offered. The works of participants are also featured in the garden :)
I aim for Thank You, Garden to grow as a community for people who are interested in digital decentralisation, the hand-crafted web culture, and building self-hosting servers. I will keep developing our DIY html toolkit, as well as featuring more projects from media artists and writers.
A workshop ‘Chatty, Messy, Sticky, Huup!‘ at Zine Camp Festival at Worm (2022 Nov 6) - An artist Chaeyoung Kim and I organized a workshop about how to present one's personal materials that are UNPUBLISHED. We asked participants to bring one digital and one physical piece of their works (photos, text, drawing, etc) and share them to each other.
Issue 4. It’s like I’m driving on an endless highway - In the fourth issue, I wanted to question about scrolling down, which is one of the most common user mechanisms. Today most of the contents on the digital interface are super linearly laid. We can just easily scroll down. But then I often feel I lose myself while repeating the same finger movements. I've often thought it's like driving on an endless highway. It doesn't have obstacles but weirdly I'm getting oblivious of things. I wanted to criticize this pervasive interface design doesn't consider our diverse intuitions and choices enough. Please check the work at https://usersentimentalexperience.net/issue4_down/issue4.html
(It was published on the 20th Sep 2022)
Issue1. A luxurious life on the web: A zone out room - Starting a question from a 'click' mechanism, which is one of the main user behaviours, I created a zone out room on the web to question the efficiency-oriented stress and pressure of web users today. This room is a place where visitors can literally space out, letting the time just go. They get to click some elements in the room but what they achieve from all the clicks seem quite small and subtle joy. The artist believes today web can give people more relaxing experience.
The landing page of User Sentimental eXperience - This is a landing page of the web publishing platform 'User Sentimental eXperience' I run. The page presents all the issues I have been publishing. Here is the link: https://usersentimentalexperience.net/
Issue3. Console yourself: A chocolate box - In the third issue, the artist explored and experimented with a function of web/app programming called 'console'. The 'console' is a section where programmers/designers/developers inspect whether their code is working well or not. But then the word 'console' also entails another meaning of comforting/soothing someone after some grief or frustration. The artist thought that she wants to give some little comfort with a bite of chocolate to people who have been enduring the persistent pandemic life, with the console function. The idea is that users open the console section with a right click of mouse, then write any supportive comments to themselves. Through this mechanism they get to take a bite of chocolate, which is a small moment of consolation.
Issue2. Fill the fishbowl with your web memory - In the second issue, the artist wanted to talk about user autonomy on the web. The fishbowl functions as a note pad that users can write their thoughts and feelings on the websites they visit in a day, then make a full record as a print format. It entails a question what the web-surfing is today, and how active or passive users get to be, when floating the web world everyday.
