Senior Spotlight: Connie Ye

Posted on May 10, 2021

Connie Ye

Briefly describe your artistic practice.
I like to make delightful, game-adjacent experiences! I love to see others play with the artifacts that I create, and oftentimes I use computation to create personalized interactions. Because I enjoy exploring new technologies, I take a generalist approach to learning how to use them; however, I believe that themes of playfulness, nostalgia, humor, and self-expression are visible in all of my work, no matter what medium they were made in. I like to optimize for joy in my work. I’m most interested in building opinionated open-ended interactive software that provides ways for my audience to express their own creativity within rigid artistic constraints. I’m especially inspired by tools like Bitsy, the p5.js editor, and Picrew. A small subset of my work is not interactive and instead explores other technologies, such as 3D modeling and wearables.

What are you currently working on?
I’m currently wrapping up a lot of projects for classes and am working on a fun freelance creative technology project in my free time! A different project that I’m in the process of finishing up and about to release is called Internet Postcards, which is a chrome extension that lets you send real, physical postcards from any website. I’m releasing it soon, and thanks to the generous Maddy Varner Award for Teeth-based or Time-based Works, I’ll be able to allow about 200 people to send 3 postcards each for free! If anyone is interested in following the progress of the project or trying it out when it’s ready, I’ll be announcing it on my Twitter!

What do you plan to do after graduation?
I plan on working as a UI/UX engineer, which is a mix between software engineering and design. Sometimes the role is similar to that of a creative technologist. Sometimes, it’s more focused on programming prototypes for UX research. Sometimes, it’s more about implementing production interfaces in a way that’s informed by your own design sense while working with a design team. For the role I’m starting, it seems like it’ll mostly be front-end web development! I’m really excited about it because it allows me to stay creative while also being technical. I also plan on continuing to make free playful online experiences in my free time with the art collective that I’m a part of called Algorat, which recently released a viral dating sim game called the Ratchelor. I also want to continue crafting by making stickers/prints and playing around with physical computing in my free time.

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