Garden Web is a digital prototype developed through the design project 'Alternative Web Spaces'. It explores alternative approaches to web design in response to the internet’s shift from an open, exploratory space to a commercialised environment focused on efficiency, standardisation, and user engagement. This project draws from Yancey Strickler’s Dark Forest Theory and early internet art practices to examine how digital spaces can support slower, more intentional forms of interaction. Garden Web is conceived as a series of interactive, browser-based spaces designed to encourage reflection, connection, and play.

It is a proposal for cultivating a healthier internet.

Websites can function as personal, expressive environments rather than platforms for content delivery.

The internet can support diverse ways of being and interacting, beyond metrics and monetisation.

Small-scale, intentionally designed spaces can offer meaningful alternatives to dominant web paradigms.

The internet was once a vast, playful space. But as the web became increasingly commercialised, it become more uniform, optimised for engagement rather than exploration.

If the internet is a place we inhabit, where are the digital spaces to pause, wander, and rest?

Garden Web is an invitation to slow down, wander digitally at a more thoughtful pace. Through browser-based art and interactive rooms, using a design philosophy of slow technology: a design agenda for technology aimed at reflection and moments of mental rest rather than efficiency in performance.

I want to especially thank designer Pauline Esguerra for helping me figure out how to use the Are.na API in JavaScript, and for guiding me in shaping a clearer framework for approaching Garden Web - both through our interview and through her Soft.Space net art as a reference point.

I'm also grateful to my supervisor Andreas, lecturer Kelvin, my friend in software engineering, my cousins in computer science, my boyfriend’s web developer friend, my friend’s coder boyfriend, and the generous community on glitch.com - for relentlessly offering their help, no matter how small or big.

A special thank you as well to Spencer Chang, for patiently replying to my playHTML questions on Discord. Also thanks everyone who constantly send me more and more AI that are able to build websites. Unfortunately, what I wanted to build was more net.art based, and it wasn't easy to to ask for help without knowing some of the technical terms either.

Pixel icon created by Freepik - Flaticon

And of course - how could I forget. ChatGPT, for being my semi-silent coding partner throughout this whole process. I truly dove headfirst into this project not knowing much about anything, so... thanks for keeping me afloat.