Reflecting on a Dialogue with Max Ryan
My Unit 2 project “Meme Drift” explores how memes move away from their original images, contexts and meanings through circulation and transformation. Through a publication and website experiments in code, I investigated what remains recognisable when an image is simplified, fragmented or recombined. My tutorial with Max Ryan introduced references that I am now revisiting alongside my subsequent assessment feedback. Together, they help me reconsider the relationship between visual transformation and critical enquiry.
During the tutorial, Max recommended Electronic Superhighway, Oliver Laric’s Versions, Rafaël Rozendaal’s Abstract Browsing, Trevor Paglen’s From ‘Apple’ to ‘Anomaly’, and Metahaven’s Can Jokes Bring Down Governments?. I would like to choose two references particularly interest me: Versions, for the relationships it reveals between different images and the questions it raises about originality and copying; and Abstract Browsing, for its translation of web content into coloured structures and then woven objects.
What interests me about Versions is the possibility of recognising a shared visual structure across images that initially appear unrelated. This makes me reconsider my own use of transformation sequences. In Meme Drift, I organised material to show how an image could move away from an identifiable starting point. However, this arrangement may imply that the original is a stable reference against which every subsequent version should be measured. Laric’s work prompts me to consider another possibility: a version can establish new relationships as well as retain traces of an earlier image. Drift might therefore be understood through branching connections, rather than only through distance from an origin.
Rozendaal’s Abstract Browsing offers a different way of thinking about what survives transformation. The software reduces webpage content to coloured rectangles, revealing its underlying organisation. Selected compositions are subsequently translated into textiles(Rozendaal, 2016). I am drawn to both the visual result and the movement between media. It connects with my decision to bring circulating internet images into a printed publication, where they can be examined at a different pace.
However, this connection also exposes a question within my own work. Preserving a visual structure does not necessarily preserve its meaning. In my experiments with Loss, figures and narrative details give way to increasingly reduced arrangements. Someone familiar with the meme may recognise these arrangements, while another viewer may see only abstract marks. This suggests that recognition cannot be tested through formal reduction alone: it also depends on what a viewer already knows. I have not yet investigated that difference systematically.
The assessment feedback I received after the tutorial made the need for this investigation clearer. My tutor Houman recognised the quality of my typography, layout and production, but questioned the depth of my critical reflection. I needed to explain what was significant about a meme’s transformation and what it revealed about communication, culture, politics or collective behaviour. The feedback also identified a tendency to find an idea and execute it, rather than allowing smaller experiments to generate unexpected directions.
Reading this feedback alongside Max’s recommendations, I can see a distinction between finding references that resemble my work and allowing references to challenge its assumptions. My interest in the appearance of Abstract Browsing is a useful starting point, but I need to ask what its method enables me to investigate. Similarly, Versions becomes more useful when it unsettles my treatment of origins and sequences.
Revisiting Max’s recommendations alongside my assessment feedback has helped me identify questions within the work I have already made. Although these references have not yet led me to a new enquiry, they offer ways to reflect more critically on my existing publication and website. The next step is to test these possibilities through smaller experiments, using making and writing together to examine what each transformation reveals and why it matters.
References
Laric, O. (2010) Versions [Video]. Available at: https://oliverlaric.com/ (Accessed: 21 September 2026).
Laric, O. (2012) Versions [Video]. Available at: https://oliverlaric.com/ (Accessed: 21 September 2026).
Metahaven (2013) Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? Memes, Design and Politics. Moscow: Strelka Press.
Paglen, T. (2019) From ‘Apple’ to ‘Anomaly’ (Pictures and Labels) [Installation]. The Curve, Barbican Centre, London, 26 September 2019–16 February 2020. Available at: https://paglen.studio/2020/04/09/from-apple-to-anomaly-pictures-and-labels-selections-from-the-imagenet-dataset-for-object-recognition/ (Accessed: 21 September 2026).
Rozendaal, R. (2014) Abstract Browsing [Software and textile project]. Available at: https://www.newrafael.com/notes-on-abstract-browsing/ (Accessed: 21 September 2026).
Whitechapel Gallery (2016) Electronic Superhighway (2016–1966) [Exhibition]. London, 29 January–15 May. Available at: https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/electronic-superhighway-2/ (Accessed: 21 September 2026).
Ryan, M. (2026) Personal communication with the author, guest tutorial, 12 June.
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