Wang & Söderström

How art can help us rethink our relationship with tech

Copenhagen-based artist duo Wang & Söderström discuss why creativity is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal when it comes to articulating humanity’s shifting relationship with technology

Anny Wang and Tim Söderström have been playing around with tech in one form or another ever since they were teenagers. Coming of age during the halcyon days of the early internet, amid a thriving culture of online piracy, meant they would spend much of their time on their home computers, downloading new digital software and figuring out their own ways of using it.

“In a way, we were hardwired to work naïvely,” says Söderström. “Similarly today, we’re perhaps not using digital technology in the most streamlined way, but we are finding ways to create what we want. And I think the more people use tools like this, it’s pushing the boundaries of technology and what the outcomes can be, not only predetermined by the original idea of the tool.”

Having met and started dating in 2011, the couple decided to launch their multi-disciplinary studio in 2016, creating everything from 3D animations to sculptures and installations. Their shared obsession with blurring the lines between physical and digital worlds first developed while they were at university. Söderström was studying architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Wang was doing spatial design at the University of Gothenburg, where they were introduced to 3D software as a means to create drawings and renderings.