Callum Howard: Scroll to continue

Scroll to continue is a response to Optic by Craig Stubbs-Race and Marcus Whale, but looks at the perversion of the internet in contemporary times. The work hypothesises that we are so attuned to motions such as swiping, scrolling, and tapping that even when these motions are abstracted from their context their origin may still be readily recognised. The interactive experience has the audience observing these motions from the other side of the glass, as if from within the device. More is progressively revealed as the audience further explores the space.

The interactions presented may defy what is expected from user interfaces and 3D spaces, and is designed to unsettle, reflect, and breach the surface for a self-aware moment of clarity amongst the sea of endless noise that is our habitual scrolling, swiping and tapping, zombie-like, dream-state. The artist admits he is an avid user of the internet and social media data harvesting platforms and insists he can quit at any time (he just doesn’t want to).

Click here to experience Callum Howard’s Scroll to continue in your browser.

Callum Howard is an interactive media artist and software developer based in Sydney. His art practice includes tangible electronics and virtual generative experiences. His works touch on themes of interconnectedness, post-humanism and artificial life, and will often invite the user to uncover more by probing and exploring what is presented.

Prior to his current job Callum was a VFX Lighting TD on three feature films at Animal Logic, and prior to that a developer in the creative arts studio Code On Canvas. Callum is always on the lookout for new tools, technologies, skills and collaborators that can help bring new ideas to life.

Scroll to continue is commissioned by 4A and curated by the Curatorial Assistant for 2021, Marco Rinaldi, as part of 4A’s Digital Curatorship. The 4A Curatorial Assistant Program is supported by the Sally Breen Family Foundation.