Matthew Keff

Juicy Squish is an app-based multimedia project which lovingly pokes fun at gamified design in digital culture today. It uses the aesthetics found in internet and videogame culture and is interested in how emotions operate and are communicated within these spaces. Taking inspiration from fidget toys, idle games and ASMR apps, the game has no inherent goals or achievements. Instead, the player is faced with a simple interaction in which they can engage with for any amount of time. Playing with these simulations creates awkward audiovisual scenarios that riff off emoticons and collectible rewards, digital candy. There is a series of six app episodes that comprise the software portion of the installation. Each episode has a variation on the theme with different characters and discoverables. Encompassing the apps is a web campaign which spans over a mobile-only website, social media and popular mobile app stores.

These software-based projects are a starting point for digital or physical installations that seek to create pseudo subcultural paraphernalia taking inspiration from mobile devices and electronics storefronts or video game convention displays. Video, vinyl stickers, 3D fabrication, ready-made mobile devices, interactive apps, and advertising signage techniques are some of the materials Juicy Squish turns to in this exploration.

Juicy Squish is part of an online mobile-only exhibition, curated by Tom Milnes on Polygon Palm. Polygon Palm is a digital art platform for desktop and mobile-only exhibitions. Additionally there are free downloadable app versions of the work available here:

iOS - https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/matthew-keff/id1527463168

ANDROID - https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Sweet+Sweet

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This artwork is curated and part of the Digerati Emergent Media Festival - Welcome to the Here and Now 2023

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About the Artist

Matthew Keff is a digital and installation artist based in New York holding a BFA from SVA (School of Visual Arts) 2007. Through interactive app-based works and graphics, Keff looks to reveal the more awkward nature of contemporary digital visual culture and considers the role emotions play there. This sweet-as-candy imagery is informed by attention economy mechanisms used in digital marketing, where emotional engagement is a highly valued commodity. Matthew has participated in numerous international exhibitions at CADAF, New York, NY (2022) Supernova Digital Animation Festival, Denver, CO (2020), Magdalen Art Space, Oxford, England (2020), CCAM Yale University, New Haven, CT (2019), Somerset House, London, UK (2019), 4Culture, Seattle, WA (2018), Chromatic Festival, Montréal, Canada (2018), Abrons Arts Center, New York, NY (2019), Tokyo Game Show, Tokyo, Japan (2018), and A Maze Festival, Berlin, Germany (2018).