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Yehwan Song
Net Art: Net art is art that is created and shared on the internet. It often uses digital tools and online platforms, allowing people to interact with it.
Yehwan Song’s creative process seems to come from experimenting rather than following strict rules. She doesn’t begin with the goal of learning coding in a traditional sense but instead uses it as a tool to reach creative goals. She believes in trying to make something first and letting the coding support that idea, rather than mastering coding first and then thinking about what to do with it. This approach helps her keep things spontaneous and artistic, especially when working with web-based projects.
Her work often changes depending on where she is or who she is with. For example, she mentioned how being in South Korea, New York, or Europe gives her different feelings and ideas. Each place offers new perspectives, and her art reflects that. She also travels a lot for exhibitions and workshops, which constantly feeds new inspiration into her work. So her creative process isn’t fixed—it grows based on her environment and experiences.
visual, technical, material features
Visually, Yehwan’s work often looks strange, unpredictable, and even a little chaotic on purpose. She plays with the idea of making websites that go against normal user expectations, which is part of her “anti user-friendly” philosophy. This means the websites might have strange navigation, broken layouts, or odd animations. It’s all intentional—she’s pushing people to rethink how the internet can feel and look.
Technically, she uses web coding like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and she sometimes explores creative coding tools like Processing or p5.js. But she prefers working with the web because it’s more public and interactive. The web, as she sees it, is built from layers of anonymous people’s code, which creates a messy, fascinating space. Her work taps into that messy structure, showing how fragile and flexible web environments can be.
forms of interaction used
Yehwan’s art is very interactive, but not in the way we usually expect. She doesn’t design websites to be easy or convenient—she designs them to surprise, confuse, or even challenge the user. She wants people to slow down and think differently about how they navigate the internet. Her websites often ask users to explore and interact in unexpected ways, like making it hard to scroll, click, or even read what’s on the screen.
Instead of making things simple, she focuses on making things strange or thought-provoking. It’s less about making a tool and more about creating an experience. She sees the internet as a performance space, not just a place for information. The interaction isn’t always smooth, but it’s meaningful—it forces you to question your habits and expectations when browsing online.
the artist’s intentions, views, background, methods, inspirations
Yehwan’s background is in graphic design, but she later moved into coding and web art. She studied at the School for Poetic Computation in New York, which really shaped her views on tech and art. She was especially inspired by the community there and how they valued different ways of learning and thinking about code. In South Korea, she found that people were more focused on learning code in a structured way, which she didn’t enjoy as much.
Her intention isn’t just to make cool websites—it’s to question how we use the web and who the web is for. She’s influenced by thinkers like Taeyoon Choi and the SFPC community, who also see code as a form of poetry or protest. Her methods are about breaking away from design rules, especially those that serve commercial goals. She wants to give people a new way to experience the internet—more like a journey or performance than a tool.
conceptual or historical context
Yehwan’s work fits into a larger history of experimental web art and creative coding. She’s part of a movement that challenges mainstream design, especially ideas that focus only on user-friendliness, accessibility for profit, and fast navigation. Her “anti user-friendly” concept is a critique of how the internet has become too controlled, predictable, and centered around big platforms or businesses. She wants to bring back a sense of weirdness and personal expression to the web.
Historically, her work connects to the idea that technology can be poetic and political at the same time. Artists have long used tools in unexpected ways to make statements, and Yehwan is doing this with code. Covid also played a role in how she thinks about space—since we were all stuck inside and online, she began to see the web more as a place for artistic exploration and community. Her art lives in that space between the digital and physical, and she’s now exploring how to install her web-based pieces into real-world exhibitions.
Net art uses the internet as a medium for creating and sharing art. Yehwan Song’s work does this by using the internet to connect with people all over the world. Her art might focus on topics like technology, privacy, and online identity. The significance of her work is that it makes us think about how technology affects our lives and how we behave online. Her work might encourage viewers to reflect on their relationship with the internet. The impact of her work depends on whether it makes people think differently about how they use technology.
The key features of the internet that are important for Song’s work are interactivity, global reach, and its ability to exist entirely online. The internet allows people to interact with her art, which makes it more engaging. Her work exists in the digital space, so it doesn’t require a physical location. This gives it a wider audience. The internet also connects people from all over the world, making her art part of a global conversation.
In CCLab, we’re learning to use coding to create interactive art and projects. Yehwan Song’s work connects to this because she uses coding to make her art interactive. She applies techniques like variables, loops, and functions to create art that changes or responds to the viewer. This is similar to what we’re doing in CCLab, where we create interactive experiences and digital art. Her work shows how coding can be a tool to create engaging and creative art online.
From Yehwan Song’s work, we learn how digital art can create new ways for people to interact with art. It shows that the internet isn’t just for sharing information; it can also be used to make art more engaging. We also learn to think more critically about how technology affects our lives, especially with privacy and online identity. Her work encourages us to reflect on how digital spaces influence how we live and communicate.
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