Toggler is a new website feature allowing commissioned artists to explore, demonstrate and celebrate the potential of creativity in website design.
As websites become increasingly standardised to ensure familiarity and ease of use for online visitors, Toggler allows artists to champion the role of curiosity and creativity in exploring other possibilities for presenting content online.
Visitors are able to view our website through different lenses by toggling between styles developed by commissioned artists.
Violet Forest is a Berlin-based artist and co-founder of Cybertwee, a collective that explores the intersections of technology and cuteness, femininities and feelings.
Can you tell us a bit about your practice?
My practice is mixed. I’ve done VR, AR and experimental websites but I started out as a film photographer. I worked in design studios as a front-end developer so I pull a lot of what I’ve learned from there into browser experiments, design-wise and technically.
What interested you in the Toggler commission?
I love breaking technology. I have a memory of being 10 years old and breaking the OS of my desktop computer by throwing random system files into the recycling bin, or I would just change random settings to see what it did. I learn by breaking and reverse engineering code so I was happy to break the Fermynwoods website.
Can you explain the ideas behind your approach to Toggler?
I also like going on codepen.com and finding interesting experiments or sketches people have done with CSS and JavaScript. I have fun mixing and matching different pens so I took some ideas I found and threw all the CSS together. I usually aim to not have an outcome in mind – it’s always nice to see the outcome of something you never imagined in your head.
The ideas in the Toggler sketch were inspired by interesting CSS tricks like scrolling with fixed position, mix-blend-mode exclusion, using :before and :after pseudoselectors. All things we used in the design studios to create commercial websites, so it’s nice to see these ideas come to life in an artistic way instead of for commercial purposes; I kind of daydream about having a World Wide Web that is dominated by artistic experiences instead of for corporate purposes.
To explore our website using Violet’s commissioned code select VIOLET FOREST from the drop down Toggler menu above. Please note Toggler will not affect your visiting experience of the home page. To return to the standard website design, please select DEFAULT from the menu.