Worldbuilding zines, USB lockets, and other objects

Works in browser, mixed media, and more.

Today’s issue of PHONE TIME includes a dispatch from the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab’s Fall Semester Student Showcase. Plus, the project “my usb locket” by Alberto Cinco Jr.

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Earlier this month, I went to the Columbia University School of the Arts Digital Storytelling Lab’s Fall Semester Student Showcase, which included works from the Digital Storytelling I, Digital Storytelling III, and New Media Art classes. Physical zines, browser-based games, and interactive exhibits were all part of the showcase, which took place at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center.

One corner of the showcase was full of “worldbuilding zines,” which were the projects of students in the Digital Storytelling 1: The Theory and History of Interactivity class, according to a description booklet. “Each zine includes five sections: Environment, Ritual, Inhabitants, System, and Place in the Universe,” the booklet stated.

One of the zines pictured here is titled “Liminal Spaces” by Sophia Lim and consists of a blood bag, flipbook, and clipboard. “The playful yet haunting work uses a surreal hospital setting to explore life, death, and the transitions that blur the space between them,” reads the work’s description.

There were also several virtual environments, which can be explored through New Art City. In “The Fallen Garden” by Nina Uesato, Patrixia Arbelàez, Shan Jiang, Shiny Lu, and Vicky Xie, you enter a rich lavender landscape, and can traverse the water to reach other elements like an island, flowers, clouds, a message in a bottle, and half-submerged house.

The work is based around the idea of the “dead internet” through a feminine lens, as “a strange afterlife—a garden of leftovers where feeds, glitches, and AI voices become material to be arranged.”

The description lists elements including photo collage, sketches, and AI-generated audio.

Inside the house is an installation called “damp girlhood,” which “recreates a teenage girl’s bedroom after the internet dies—a life that existed online now scattered into physical pieces,” its description reads. The room contains among its elements an abandoned flip phone, decorated walls, a used diary (which links to a Miro board with its entries), and furniture.

In an interface within “damp girlhood,” you can type words that then become falling tears. You can adjust size, font color, speed, and the bounce of the letters as they hit the bottom of the screen.

“Third Eden” creates an inviting, lush greenhouse environment post-internet.

Vibe-coding was embraced in making many elements in the projects, including in “The Fallen Garden.”

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I spoke with designer and technologist Alberto Cinco Jr. several weeks ago for another reporting project, and I also just had to ask him about his “my usb locket” project. The idea came upon seeing the USB Club project, a “social file exchange” which started in Brooklyn.

“When I saw a photo of someone wearing a USB as their necklace, I was like, “Can USBs be lockets in a way like that? That can hold memories,’” he said.

Recently, Cinco Jr. has been into handmade websites, “because I feel like what’s missing on the internet lately is kind of like the spirit of humanity,” he said.

On the project, Cinco Jr. describes that email or USBs were the only practical way to share files, given the internet speeds in the Philippines.

“I feel like now that everyone that’s moving to cloud, moving to drive, having some sort of a physical drive again that can hold your memories, makes the memories feel more tangible and closer to your heart, literally.”

You can click to get more file ideas, including a “.JPG image of a sunset you just witnessed,” a “.PNG screenshot of the notes of the perfume you’re wearing according to Fragrantica,” and a “.TXT file of your favorite poem.”