popup internet cafe 2/28
Drop by POPUP INTERNET CAFE, where the menu features a selection of seven interactive works by artists and gamemakers that explore forgotten memories of an earlier web.
From autobiographical web poetry to desktop simulation games, the pieces in the show capture stories of connection and/or loss, told across recovered HTML websites, simulated instant messenger clients, Flash-era games, and obsolete protocols.
Transformed into a reimagined internet cafe, this exhibition brings memories, perhaps once experienced alone behind glowing screens, into shared space for gathering, remembering, and reimagining together.
This event is curated by Jackie Liu and Amy Wibowo and will be hosted at bubblesort studios for the 1 year anniversary of its physical location.
last seen online (2024, Henry Tran) is a psychological horror escape room based on early flash games. Told through a simulated desktop environment, players must look through computer files and solve puzzles to discover the secrets that lie within the computer.
I feel so much shame (2024, Jackie Liu) is a browser-based interactive narrative made from scanned Risograph prints. It offers a meditation on shame and desire as told through interactive and animated buttons, hyperlinks, inputs, and background gradients made embodied and material.
Relational Dance Dance (2025-ongoing, Jackie Liu) is an autobiographical web-based game, inspired by Flash parodies and remix culture of Dance Dance Revolution, that explores dance rhythm game mechanics as a metaphor for somatic healing, relational patterns, and creating new memories through embodied play.
On Naxos (2026, Cara Esten Hurtle) is an interactive poetic retelling of the myth of Ariadne and her abandonment by her lover, Theseus, on a monochrome terminal. It's a branching narrative on loneliness and culpability for others' violence told in a way that evokes Zork and early text adventures.
Lost Memories Dot Net (2017, Nina Freeman & Aaron Freedman) is a game about chatting and building websites as a teenage girl in 2004. You play as 14 year old Nina, chatting with your online friend Kayla about a middle school love triangle, and building your blog between messages.
home sweet homepage (2022, Amy Wibowo) is an interactive personal narrative comic about the websites Amy made in middle and high school. It’s a story about carving a home for yourself online when it feels like there’s no other place you fit in.
starfruit blog (2026, Amy Wibowo) is a reconstructed copy of Amy’s blog from 2002-2008, pieced together from digital archives.