Wang & Söderström | Artist-Design Duo
- Tuna Mert
- 39 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Wang & Söderström operate at the porous edge where technology, ecology, and material imagination converge. Formed during their studies in architecture and design, the artist–design duo has built a practice rooted in fluid transitions between digital and physical processes, speculative narratives, and tangible matter. Rather than treating technology as a tool of separation, their work frames it as a connective tissue: linking organisms, infrastructures, histories, and futures. Through installations, animations, and research-driven exhibitions, Wang & Söderström explore sensing, communication, and interconnectedness across scales—revealing worlds where materials feel alive, systems are entangled, and nothing exists in isolation.
Interview: Tuna Mert Topuz
Could you tell us a bit about yourselves and how you began your journey as an artist and design duo exploring the intersections of technology and ecology?
We met when we were studying architecture and design (2012). We started to help each other with projects for our different classes. Both of us quickly leaned into the digital tools we had learned at school and made them a part of our process. We had a lot of fun exploring them beyond just using them for visualisation or technical drawings. We fell in love with the process of creating digitally alongside working in the physical workshops. We enjoyed how the process of mixing and switching between the different mediums gave the projects new kinds of depth and ideas.
Your work often blurs the line between the digital and the physical in striking ways. When beginning a new project, how do you navigate the dialogue between these two realms, and what guides your decisions in translating an idea across both realities?
We do not have any fixed rules in our process. We don't force the work to be both digital and physical. We encourage the switch between mediums. Instead, we insist that the different layers of reality can enhance and enrich each other. It is almost impossible to formulate a scenario that is both physical and digital in a convincing way without it becoming cliché or feeling shallow. It works best when the worlds are blended in subtle and unformulated ways. So many things, both digital and physical, are immaterial.
The materials in your work feel almost alive — like they have personalities. How do you manage to create that tactile, sensory feeling in a digital space?
If you pick up a stone at the beach, you pick up something with a really fantastic story. This stone was once cosmic particles, and more recently part of a mountain (maybe a cliff where a couple of pterodactyls had their nest), before getting chipped off and, through a long chain of events, ending up on that beach where you pick it up. Everything is connected within these chains of events. By giving hints to that, for example, when modelling a crab shell, it might make it feel more ‘alive’. Creating a feeling that these things you see on screen are part of a world of some kind and are not isolated things, but connected to a world or network. Everything is connected, nothing is entirely isolated.
Your last exhibition, “Sharp Feelers – Soft Antennas” at Röhsska Museum, explores communication across species and technologies, from ants’ tunnels to satellite signals. Could you walk us through some of the works in the exhibition and share what each one reveals about the connections between technology, ecology, and sensing?
The exhibition was about this interconnectedness and the ways life and things communicate with their different kinds of antennas and senses. For example, we made a representation of the first Swedish satellite, which was called ‘Viking’, which was launched to explore the aurora borealis in the 1980s. Next to it was our short animation ‘Rehousing Technosphere’, shown, where you follow a bunch of lifeforms and their way of existing in the speculative future material crust of Earth. In another room of the exhibition, we created a folding wall in which we looked into the vast archive of objects the museum has from the 16th and 17th centuries, with a focus on our human senses.
You’ve recently announced the split between New Orb as a design service studio and Wang & Söderström as your continued artist–design duo. What made you feel it was the right moment to separate those two worlds? And has this shift opened up new creative space for you?
The split is mainly about clarity in communication.
As we, under the name of Wang & Söderström, today have the opportunity to explore ideas artistically and research-based. We needed a channel to communicate that we also do client-based and design service-oriented work. A place where we can share an R&D process that is not yet a finished idea. Having two different practices has been in our thoughts for years, but didn’t have time and space until recently to introduce the split.
Looking ahead, are there any new techniques, materials, or technologies you’re curious to explore that might push your practice in unexpected directions?
We have set a goal for 2026 to take our hands-on craft skills further and into new territories! We are looking into glass and metalwork and hope to find interesting ways of developing our ideas.
