TAP TO WATCH LIVE

TAP TO WATCH LIVE is a series that transmutes imagery captured from TikTok livestreams into delicate beaded textile works, challenging the transience of digital media and subverting the logic of the attention economy.

The work debuted as TikTok faced an imminent ban in the United States, where 150 million of its users reside. To draw from the platform's live feeds is to engage with impermanence on two fronts: the chosen imagery is ephemeral in the most literal sense — a brief moment arrested from an ever-moving stream — but it is also subject to the political and economic precarity of the platform itself. This crisis underscores the degree to which human connection, as it plays out online, remains at the mercy of corporations, politicians, and forces far beyond our control.

An accompanying video work, built in TouchDesigner, digitally stitches together a constellation of TikTok live feeds — replicating the chaotic, stream-of-consciousness intimacy that defines this corner of the internet.

As part of the install, I incorporated a performance element, embellishing textile imagery sourced from TikTok Live while streaming on the platform itself, further entangling my own presence with the digital realities — and non-realities — I investigate.