Content & Container
Positioning the Experiment：From “Form Follows Function” to “The Medium is the Message”
Expertise: Digital Experience | Methology | Material
Design: March 2025
Design: March 2025
Is the way information is distributed a form of information in itself? I place the same image into different containers—crumpling, folding, cutting, translating—and as the medium shifts, the image deforms, and its meaning drifts. We are quick to read images as symbols: a patch of blue or green, a subject against a background, a piece of paper, a 3D model, an animal, a goose. But images are not fixed; once they enter a different medium, they become something else. This project is not about what an image is, but how it becomes—how it turns into movement, into object, into space, into interface. Form is no longer merely a vessel for content; it is a function in itself, a structure through which meaning is continuously generated.
The choice of Riso printing comes from its ability to represent color blocks through dots of varying density, making the layering of the image more visible. In this printing method, white space and light gray are no longer just subtle color differences but distinct visual elements: white space indicates the absence of ink, while light gray is formed by low-density dots.
Using a cube as the medium allows for a multi-perspective way of viewing. The image can be perceived in fragmented, disjointed ways—one can see the green base separately from the shape of the goose, then mentally connect the two to reconstruct the image of a duck on the grass. This fragmentation evokes the idea of multiple facets of an object and how different visual fragments are pieced together.
When the web becomes the final medium, click interactions are integrated to associate the cube with the imagery of a dice, further emphasizing the image’s variability and revealing the multiple possibilities of image segmentation.
Borrowing from The Medium is the Massage, the content of a new medium is often the old medium. The medium leaves traces on the content, eventually becoming part of it. The creases on paper, once scanned, are no longer just attributes of the medium but become part of the image itself.
The scanned content exists as a JPG file on a computer screen, which is then uploaded to a website. The website attempts to recreate the experience of viewing different paintings within a space. In this process, the medium repeatedly transforms into content. Yet, the information itself remains unchanged—a goose standing on a patch of grass. As the medium continues to evolve, each transition leaves its own trace within the new container.
Reference Points