As an aspiring software developer, Wan Yi Chen has always been passionate about the boundless opportunities with new technology in today’s world. Ever since her high school years, Wan Yi was fascinated with the possibilities of what a few lines in code can do. Her early engagement with computer science fueled her interest in exploring creative outlets within coding. From web development, digital interactivity, to game design, Wan Yi’s craft focuses on drawing relatable experiences to her audience. Many of her works seek to captivate emotion through drawing personal connections to her life. They represent a side of her that doesn’t just involve problem solving through programming, but one that explores the imagination and innovation of her creative expression with those around her.
Technology itself has revolutionized the idea of journaling as there is this overarching dependency on mobile devices and the internet. Now, whenever someone wants to recall what they did or what happened on a certain day, they simply go on through their phones first. Reminiscent of the difficult and different time spent in 2020, Remember When... by Wan Yi Chen is a digitalized time capsule designed in Canva and coded in p5.js that documents the artist’s recollection of the past year. With regrets of not keeping a physical written journal, the artist explores various record keeping forms of media that are familiar to almost everyone. The piece itself is a interactive program that contains personal pictures, videos, and text messages collected by the artist. It also displays a series of news articles and relatable social media posts that represent this collective journey everyone has gone through in 2020. Designed to look like a journal and act like a computer, each month is separated into their own section where users can click on a specific month to browse through the different content featured.