Hello friend,

I'm a bit nervous and excited to be writing this first dispatch. As you might know, I (Nicci) am an incubator member this year at NEW INC and have been making steps towards SHIFT CMD, a studio practice for building and publishing experimental interfaces (and soon, hosting gatherings and workshops around this). 🥳🌱 I'm particularly interested in: how can computers and how we interact with them feel stranger, more human, and more collaborative?

TBH, it feels like a terrible, confusing time to be doing anything but despair, but I hope you're still finding pockets of life to enjoy. If you'd like to learn more or catch up in general, let's find some time. I'd love to hear from you!

What SHIFT CMD is Making

My goal for these months is to start sharing and doing the uncomfortable—being visible and public. And that's what this email is here to do. But what I'm most excited about is this: the website is done(-ish)!

Lately I've been focused more on building and sharing browser-based works. One of these is Site Studies which was a series of prompts I gave myself to explore/break expectations of how we interact with interfaces. Each site reframes a default interaction logic: writing a console poem through clicking, revealing buttons only when two people are present, or requiring care to grow the webpage.

For the site that you just stare at, I went down a tangent and tried to find out where the eye test image came from (answer: inconclusive according to this Youtube) and learned someone else had done a version of this back in 2017! Inspired by my recent visit to the Taipei Art Book Fair^[1], I'm also thinking of turning this into a flip book of some kind, just for fun.

In the process of sharing this work, I revisited and iterated on some concepts: a site that highlights what you didn't select became a site that reveals, which feels like a good concept to test out in a group browsing/reading experience—turning other sites into new graphic/poetic material.

I introduced this cursor spotlight extension in a workshop with undergrads, prompting them to think about how this changes their browsing experience. You can try it yourself—if you use this extension and capture any interesting / strange / funny screenshots, send them to me! Or if there's a bug, let me know.

What's Next

• Experiments in development: browser-based choreography and next iteration of a cloud a day
• Planning a workshop around how to tend/grow a website
• So excited to have worked with the editors of The HTML Review for the latest issue, newly out today!

I appreciate you being here—I'll be posting project and event updates on the website and Instagram, and sharing more in these dispatches. If you feel there's someone who would resonate with this work, please share with them or connect us!

^{[1] People had asked about the Taipei Art Book Fair so here's a quick recap. It was my first time here after having been to previous Printed Matter fairs and the Seattle Art Book Fair (happening this May!) but I was NOT prepared. Hot tip if you get the chance to attend next time: purchase the fast pass beforehand! Lines were long, crowds were dense, but there was so much to see—lasers, live DJ, tattoo booths, food vendors—so much that I hit my limit after about an hour. Some links to cool people: CoAssembly Design Coop | meadowroom | Laughing Mouse Press | FA-KAE | HMAD | Petit Série}