CAC Atelier 丨Possessed Window: Processing Workshop

In the history of digital media, the window has never been simply a technical component of graphical interfaces. It has functioned as both a visual apparatus and a mechanism of perceptual discipline. From the multiwindow systems at Xerox PARC to the pop-up aesthetics of late 1990s Web 1.0, the window as a frame and portal of information architecture has shaped how we perceive the boundaries between digital environments and embodied experience.

Windowed Nyan Cat, image courtesy of the artist

This workshop engages the window through the lens of net aesthetics and interface archaeology, exploring how it can transform from a passive display container into an active medium with physical properties and performative capacities. Using Processing as the development environment, participants will learn to simulate basic physical dynamics such as collision, gravity and elasticity. With the Java AWT interface, they will experiment with making windows behave as autonomous entities in the desktop space, disrupting its normative order and creating a ghostly technological presence.

Big Brothers Are Watching You, image courtesy of the artist

Before the hands-on session, Raven Kwok will present his long-term artistic research on window manipulation since 2014. His works include Big Brothers Are Watching You (2014, 2017 at ACN Seoul, 2020 at MuDA Zurich) and Windowed Nyan Cat (2019) along with its updated version (2024). These projects combine pixelated humor with desktop intervention, evoking the early visual language of internet culture and blending absurdity, disruption and glitch aesthetics to challenge the supposed stability of graphical interfaces.