Spencer Chang is building physical objects that treat the internet as a living thing. His project, Alive Internet Theory, is the entry point, but the real work is in the artifacts: a line of internet sculptures and computing shrines designed to make networked computing tangible, communal, and worth caring about.
The through line from Chang's computing-infused objects to his shrines is intentional. He is not making art about technology. He is making technology that behaves like art, inviting ritual, presence, and shared attention. That distinction matters if you think the current internet is dying from abstraction and indifference.
This episode with Jerod Santo earns a full listen because the argument Chang is building is structural, not aesthetic. How do physical objects change our relationship to digital systems? What does it mean to keep a network alive? The sculptures and shrines are the thesis made visible. Start at alivetheory.net, then shrine.computer.
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