QSL

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, on certain 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 could be confirmed with three-letter "Q codes" sent back to the broadcaster 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.

The QSL 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, United States), Dan Norton (ADEMA University, Palma, Spain), and Vasyl Savchenko (Academy of Fine Arts, Gdańsk, Poland), 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.

Since its inception in the summer of 2025, the project has been exhibited in Poland and Spain. The work was also presented at the Between Materiality and Immateriality conference in Wrocław, Poland, and will be exhibited in Chicago and Nairobi in March 2026.