Lailey Newton / Interfaces / 01.19.2026 - 02.02.2026

Interfaces dictate the conditions of your interaction with a more complex system. It acts as a mediator between the users and the machine. When these displays fail, there is no longer any meaningful interaction that can take place. The power of the user is lost. The user can only act within the parameters set out by the designer, and other potential uses beyond the intended functionality are discouraged. These digital interfaces are similar to institutional and industrial spaces. Symbols, signage, and text act as barriers and guides in these complex systems, dictating what is a space to linger in and where to move through. We become very passive participants in our environments. You are not bound by code here, but the ways to conduct yourself are conditional. With tech favouring simplicity, restriction, and profitability over experience, and with institutional spaces being designed with conformity in mind, a literacy of one's environment is needed to regain the user's power in these spaces. Interacting with spaces in a truly transformative manner disrupts the conditions in which they were designed. Maybe a chance for something new is hidden in broken code, error screens, behind ceiling tiles, in the flicker of an exit, and under coats of paint.

My practice explores the absurd relationship between illogical architecture and digital realities as a method of understanding the disordered spaces we exist within. I examine the connection between the aesthetics of archaic 3D digital graphics and the anxious nature of institutional and industrial infrastructure. I turn the attention of the audience towards this blind spot and consider these spaces. I reconfigure using digital means and paint the overlooked so these spaces can be better understood.

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