You Sent an Attachment: Exploring the Intimacy of Digital Connection Through the Tangibility of Print
Emma Wu
You Sent an Attachment presents the affectionate and sincere intimacy of digital connection to challenge the idea that online connection is superficial—a common misconception.
This thesis explores how despite the internet’s vast and quantitative nature, we engage with it in deeply personal, intimate ways; it reveals how much we think of others even as we get lost in our own online worlds.
You Sent an Attachment takes the form of a phonebook, lost at the same time landlines became obsolete, in reaction to the hyper-digital, intangible nature of memes. Together its content (memes as ephemeral, rapidly circulating media), and form (a phonebook as static, tactile, and rooted in permanence), create a contrast that invites the viewer to stop and examine the way they interact with digital media and culture. By translating digital relationships into print, this project makes the ways we connect online tangible and expresses the intimacy and affection that exist in these spaces.
Digital media has become a complex and layered fusion of text and image, and shapes the way we communicate and form relationships online. As social media platforms prioritize visual content, it serves both as transient expressions of humor and sincerity and social connection. This thesis asks how we can engage with the internet more intentionally.
How do we exist sincerely in a space that feels detached?