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Mylar: Exploring Self-Curation as a Reflexive Creative Practice
Kate Chier, Shm Garanganao Almeda, Bjoern Hartmann
TL;DR
Artists’ presentation design can express their practice, yet systems supporting living artists’ self-curation are relatively scarce. The paper develops Mylar to generate and reshape provisional portfolios, then studies how 12 artists use them. The authors characterize self-curation as reflexive: artists encounter their work anew through provisional presentations and reshape their curatorial intentions.
Problem
Systems supporting living artists as they interpret and present their own artworks are relatively scarce.
Source: §2.1 · p. 2Method
Mylar lets artists generate, compare, and reshape provisional portfolios, which the authors studied with 12 artists.
Source: §1 · p. 2Results
12 artists used provisional presentations to articulate, probe, negotiate, and forage across facets of their work, practice, and identity.
Source: §9 · p. 12Takeaways & Limitations
The authors characterize self-curation as reflexive: artists shape their work’s legibility through presentation and can revise curatorial intentions in response to provisional presentations.
Source: §1 · p. 2, §9 · p. 12Findings reflect single 60–90-minute sessions and do not establish whether generated directions continued to influence artists after the study.
Source: §8 · p. 11
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
The container holding an artist's work can itself be just as expressive as the work it presents. We investigate self-curation as a creative practice, asking how artists explore and express their identity through the design of their own artwork presentations. Drawing on a study of artists' existing presentation practices, we developed Mylar, a malleable art presentation system that lets artists rapidly generate and compare provisional portfolios, seeing their work anew through different montages. We observed how 12 artists articulated, probed, negotiated, and foraged in Mylar, using rapidly generated portfolios as epistemic artifacts for reflection. We characterize self-curation as a reflexive and plural practice, in which artists use presentation design to shape the legibility of their self and their work and reflexively correspond with provisional presentations to reshape their curatorial intentions. We share design implications for expressivity in online art platforms and for malleable prototyping as a formative design method.
1 Introduction
The paper frames artists’ presentation design as part of their creative practice and asks how self-curation can express an evolving artistic identity. It introduces Mylar, a system for rapidly generating and reshaping provisional portfolios, and studies how artists use them to reflect on their work and curatorial intentions.
1 Introduction
- Artists can extend their expression by selecting and presenting collections of their own artwork, shaping how audiences encounter their practice.Self-curation is presented as a self-reflexive interpretive practice, not just arranging individual works.Source: §1 · p. 1
- A formative study with 7 artists found that presentation needs shift with artistic practice and that example sites and sketches helped surface needs and divergent concepts.These findings shaped the vision for rapidly prototyping and evaluating a range of possible presentations.Source: §1 · pp. 1–2
- The paper asks how rapidly reimagining work presentation might shape artists’ self-curation practices.Source: §1 · p. 2
- Mylar lets artists sketch portfolio possibilities through language, visual references, and design dimensions, then reshape portfolios and reuse elements across directions.The system treats generated portfolios as provisional artifacts for testing and revising artists’ understanding of what they want their work to become.Source: §1 · p. 2
- 12 artists used provisional Mylar portfolios to articulate, probe, negotiate, and forage across different facets of their work, practice, and identity.The portfolios also served as materials through which artists recognized, questioned, and reshaped their curatorial intentions.Source: §1 · p. 2
- The authors characterize self-curation as a reflexive medium through which presentation design shapes legibility and provisional presentations can reshape curatorial intentions.They also discuss implications for expressive, autonomous online art platforms and malleable prototyping for formative design ideation.Source: §1 · p. 2
2 Related Work
Prior research addresses art curation and presentation, but systems supporting living artists’ self-curation are relatively scarce. The paper connects this gap to views of presentation as creative practice, prototypes as materials for reflection, and generative design spaces as landscapes to explore.
2.1 Supporting Art Curation and Presentation in HCI
- Systems for historical art curation are well established, but there is a relative dearth of systems supporting living artists’ interpretation and presentation of their own work.Source: §2.1 · p. 2
2.2 Art Presentation as Creative Practice
- Existing portfolio approaches largely treat presentation as something to construct and communicate through, rather than a provisional surface for discovering how work should live online.Source: §2.2 · p. 2
2.3 Prototyping as Epistemic Practice
- Prototypes can serve as generative materials for reflection: creators encounter consequences they did not anticipate and develop goals through making.Research on parallel and comparative prototyping describes alternatives as supporting comparison, critique, and divergence.Source: §2.3 · pp. 2–3
2.4 Navigating Generative Design Spaces
- When intentions are still forming, structured landscapes of generated possibilities can help make design spaces visible and navigable rather than collapsing exploration into one solution.Prior work also frames creative intent as something surfaced and refined through interaction.Source: §2.4 · p. 3
3 Formative Study
A formative study with 7 artists informed a view of self-curation as ongoing and responsive to changing artistic practice. Its findings and design goals emphasize provisional, comparable, and reusable presentations rather than one fixed portfolio.
3 Formative Study
- The formative study interviewed and conducted design-ideation activities with 7 artists who actively share creative work online.Sessions combined interviews, reactions to existing presentation sites, moodboarding, and reflective thematic analysis.Source: §3 · p. 3, §3.1 · p. 3
3.2 Curating an Evolving Practice
- Artists used different online spaces to foreground professional, personal, social, and medium-specific needs, while changing judgments about how their work should be seen.One participant reordered a commission portfolio as their work improved; another considered redesigning a site whose aesthetic no longer reflected their practice.Source: §3.2 · p. 3
- Online presentations could fall out of step with artists’ work, priorities, or aesthetic sensibilities, while the effort of restructuring made changes hard to sustain.The study therefore characterizes self-curation as ongoing reconsideration of what to foreground, group, and contextualize.Source: §3.2 · p. 3
3.3 Dimensions of Presentation Design
- Participants wanted more deliberate, engaging encounters than standardized feeds provide, while recognizing that added interaction could trade off against accessibility and reach.They also described simple lines of images as easy to view.Source: §3.3 · p. 3
- Several participants favored situated presentations that gave work a physical sense of context, describing them as more intimate and intentional than standardized layouts.Examples included sketches on a desk, work on a clothesline, and a desktop-like environment.Source: §3.3 · p. 3
3.4 Design Goals for Sustaining Self-Curation
- Mylar’s design goals treat portfolios as provisional thinking materials, keep multiple presentations available for comparison, and preserve continuity across exploration.Together, these goals support an exploratory practice in which arrangements can be instantiated, compared, reshaped, and repurposed.Source: §3.4 · p. 4
4 Mylar System Design
Mylar keeps multiple online portfolio directions provisional, allowing artists to generate, compare, and reshape presentations while preserving the underlying artwork and alternatives.
4 Mylar System Design
- The workspace pairs a portfolio preview with editing controls, while the expanded design space supports comparing directions, defining axes, and generating possibilities.Source: §4 · p. 4, Figure 2 · p. 4
4.1 Decoupling Artwork from Presentation
- Separating artwork content from presentation models lets artists create, switch, or discard directions without changing or endangering their underlying work.Source: §4.1 · p. 5
4.2 Making Alternatives Commensurable
- Mylar maps portfolios onto shared customizable axes so artists can compare alternatives and use existing directions to inform new ones.Source: §4.2 · p. 5
4.3 Materializing Directions from Partial Intentions
- Artists can generate portfolios from text, a design-space point, or a reference image; optional questions clarify intent before the system adds a new direction.Source: §4.3 · p. 5, Figure 4 · p. 5
4.4 Reshaping a Direction
- Artists can reshape a direction through direct controls, natural-language edits, or prompt-mediated reuse while keeping the presentation provisional.Source: §4.4 · pp. 5–6, Figure 5 · p. 6
4.5 System Architecture and Implementation
- Mylar parses artwork into shared JSON content, generates interface bundles, and validates and renders them in sandboxed previews.Source: §4.5 · p. 6
5 Discovery-Oriented Evaluation Study
The authors used Mylar as a design probe to study how artists work with multiple provisional presentations, rather than testing whether it produces one better portfolio.
5 Discovery-Oriented Evaluation Study
- The discovery-oriented evaluation examined how artists moved among provisional presentations to articulate intentions, test possibilities, revise ideas, and carry elements across directions.Source: §5 · p. 6
5.1 Participants
- Twelve participants identified as artists and had previously created a personal portfolio; each supplied artwork for the study.Source: §5.1 · p. 6
5.2 Procedure
- Sessions included a 10–15-minute Mary Cassatt portfolio task, followed by 20–30 minutes of unconstrained exploration with participants’ own artwork.Source: §5.2 · p. 7
5.3 Data Collection and Analysis
- Researchers transcribed interviews and used iterative inductive thematic analysis, identifying four modes: articulating, probing, foraging, and negotiating intentions in response to presentation backtalk.Source: §5.3 · p. 7
6 Findings
The findings distinguish what artists sought to make legible through presentation from how they used provisional materials to work toward it.
6 Findings
- Self-curation unfolded through both what artists made legible in presentation and how they worked with provisional materials to arrive there.Source: §6 · p. 7
6.1 Curating what Becomes Legible
Artists used presentation to make different facets of their work, practice, and selves legible, rather than collapsing them into one account.
6.1 Curating what Becomes Legible
- Three recurring patterns appeared: extending work or practice qualities into presentation (7/12), structuring relationships and hierarchy (6/12), and situating practice by role, purpose, or audience (6/12).Source: §6.1 · p. 7, Table 3 · p. 8
6.1.1 Artists extended qualities of their work or practice into its
- Seven participants used visual language, structure, metaphor, or interaction to express how their work was made or understood, including presentations that echoed their artistic settings or styles.Source: §6.1.1 · pp. 7–8, Figure 6 · p. 8
6.1.2 Artists structured relationships and attention within their body
- Six participants used grouping, sequencing, hierarchy, and navigation to express relationships within their work, including which pieces should draw attention or remain easier to find.Source: §6.1.2 · p. 8
6.1.3 Artists situated their practice around different roles, purposes,
- Six participants explored presentations for different roles, purposes, or audiences; professional portfolios and personally identifying presentations could foreground different accounts of practice.Source: §6.1.3 · pp. 8–9
6.2 Modes of Material Engagement
Artists used provisional materials to articulate, probe, negotiate, and forage as their curatorial intentions took shape across a design trajectory.
6.2 Modes of Material Engagement
- Artists shifted among articulating, probing, negotiating, and foraging as provisional materials helped shape curatorial intentions.Source: §6.2 · p. 9
6.2.1 Participants articulated curatorial intentions by giving partial
- Partial intentions became actionable when generated forms made hierarchy, placement, and visual treatment concrete and open to inspection.Source: §6.2.1 · p. 9
6.2.2 Participants probed to test how their work might be read, before
- Artists left directions underspecified to test how their work might be read before committing; probing mattered most when self-presentation remained unsettled.Source: §6.2.2 · pp. 9–10
6.2.3 Participants negotiated their presentations, revising a self-
- Encountering a provisional direction could revise the intention itself, as P3’s manga plan changed through the alternatives the process revealed.Source: §6.2.3 · p. 10
6.2.4 Artists fished and foraged across portfolios for design mate-
- Artists treated portfolios as sources of reusable components, recombining layouts and effects rather than selecting one whole portfolio.Source: §6.2.4 · p. 10
7 Discussion
The discussion frames self-curation as plural and reflexive, and considers how malleable prototypes can support formative research while also shaping what participants imagine.
7.1 Designing for Plural Accounts of a Living Practice
- Online art systems could support several situated presentations of a shared body of work, letting different views coexist without duplicating the work or requiring one canonical profile.Source: §7.1 · p. 10
7.2 Self-Curation as Reflexive Correspondence
- In self-curation, artists correspond with provisional forms as both creators and subjects, reshaping what their presentations make legible about themselves.Source: §7.2 · p. 11
7.3 Malleable Prototyping as a Formative Design Method
- Malleable prototypes let participants encounter and revise personalized, interactive possibilities during the same conversation, making emerging intentions available for study.Source: §7.3 · p. 11
- Generated artifacts are not neutral preference probes: seeded examples, design choices, and model tendencies can steer which directions participants imagine.Source: §7.3 · p. 11
- Used reflexively, malleable prototyping can make preference formation observable while requiring researchers to attend to their role in constructing the possibilities offered.Source: §7.3 · p. 11
8 Limitations and Future Work
The findings are bounded by the study’s short sessions and the artistic practices and presentation contexts represented.
8 Limitations and Future Work
- Findings reflect one 60–90-minute session per participant, so the study did not observe how self-curation or interest in generated directions changed over time.Source: §8 · p. 11
- Participants primarily worked in visual, digital media and Mylar centered web portfolios, so the account is not exhaustive of practices such as performance, sound, or installation.Source: §8 · pp. 11–12
9 Conclusion
The paper examines how artists express identity through presenting their own work, finding that provisional presentations can make self-curation reflexive and plural. It proposes support for multiple, evolving accounts through presentation design.
9 Conclusion
- Across free exploration, 12 artists used Mylar to generate, compare, and reshape provisional presentations while deciding what qualities, relationships, and audiences to make legible.Source: §9 · p. 12
- Artists encountered themselves anew through presentations that could reveal desired qualities or unsettle plans, making self-curation an evolving rather than settled practice.Source: §9 · p. 12
- The paper offers a design direction for systems that help artists hold multiple, evolving accounts of who they may be through presenting their work.Source: §9 · p. 12