Gallery 1

Discord Kittens & Muck Puppies

Si Yi Chen, Rainer Ciar, Giana Festa, Aimee Meng, Wolfgang Saker

Discord Kittens and Muck Puppies explores sentiments of loneliness, grief and misunderstanding as digital connection feels atomised through quantity rather than quality of contact. What happens when signals are crossed rather than interrupted? What does it mean to feel isolated in a mass culture distilled or distorted through personalisation, algorithms and a lack of shared language? How and where do we find connection when we are struggling to relate to each other?

You know that one meme? The Vertikal Rotierender Fisch? German Brainrot? Oh you haven’t seen it? What about the one with an AI voice of Peter Griffin explaining private property over a Minecraft playthrough clip? Or that worm guy called Marcus?

Now I feel stupid for bringing it up.

When Tony got hit by the bus in the last episode of the first season of Skins, all of my friends from school and I gathered at our usual lunch spot the next day to share our critical analysis, we had all been watching it at the same time on SBS. We had a mutual cultural touchstone; maybe our parents or older siblings weren’t interested, but our discourse was framed by the common culture we were participating in, consuming, and sharing. This was a watercooler (or water bubbler) moment.

These moments feel increasingly harder to come by or manufacture. Meanwhile, loneliness, grief, and disconnect seem to be swelling in the face of a shrinking shared understanding of the world.

This exhibition examines how the culture we consume determines how we connect and considers the challenges faced when trying to build sincere relationships as channels of communication change, shift or regress.

This exhibition is developed by Firstdraft.