BACKGROUND
QSL - I Acknowledge Receipt of your Transmission is an international collaborative project inspired by analog radio technology. In the early 1900s shortwave operators discovered that, oncertain nights and in particular weather, they could hear signals originating beyond the curve of the horizon - an amazing feat at the time. The details of these one-way transmissions were then confirmed with three-letter "Q codes" sent back and forth via postcard.

QSL cards form a beautiful, physical residue of human-to-human connection across great distances. This stands in contrast to the march of digital technology, which threatens to supplant reality as the primary space where interpersonal relationships are conducted. Wholly virtual interactions lack the conceptual “weight” inherent to tangible results; while the democratization of the Internet was great in theory, we forgot that making something too easy can also destroy its value.

COLUMBIA QSL PROJECT

The QSL I Acknowledge Receipt of your Transmission project restores constructive friction to the communication process by pairing collaborators from distant geographic locations and tasking them with the creation of physical artworks.

The first iteration of the project was launched by professors Taylor Hokanson, Columbia College Chicago; Dan Norton, ADEMA University, Mallorca; and Vasyl Savchenko, Academy of Fine Arts, Gdańsk, who encouraged their students to share their artworks on the digital platform Figma.

Participants experimented with different ways to download and physically manifest one another’s designs, which were then remixed, fed back into the computer, and shared out for further manipulation.