Matthew Prebeg Studio is a research and design practice working with community and cultural institutions to make knowledge public. The studio's work takes shape through participatory research, co-design, and digital programming. Based in Toronto, working globally.
Biography
Matthew Prebeg is Toronto-based artist, designer and researcher. He’s ultimately curious about how technology shapes us and what alternative relationships with it are possible.
His work often takes shape through material and hands-on experimentation with technology as a form of critical reflection. His latest writing and public engagements examine the role of the public sphere in online culture (Wikipedia, It’s Nice That, The Elysian).
He collaborates with community and cultural institutions to make knowledge public (Living Web Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Movember). His approach is informed by service design, participatory action research, storytelling and knowledge translation.
Matthew graduated from the University of Toronto with a M.Sc. in Translational Research in 2024. He is a founder of the Living Web Institute.
See full CV spreadsheet here.
Press
The Creative Independent (2026)
Perfectly Imperfect Rec Room (2025)
Everpress One's to Watch (2025)
SEVEN Magazine (2024)
Footnote
This website uses the Are.na API to randomly pull images of objects I keep at my desk.
Typeset in EB Garamond and Arial.
© 2026
About
Practice
Research and synthesis
Facilitation and co-design
Storytelling and knowledge translation
Strategy and advisory
Digital projects
Selected work
Living Web Institute (ongoing)
IYS Collaboration Centre, CAMH (ongoing)
Movember (2025)
Clinical Trials Ontario (2024)
More
See more projects, credentials and publications on my CV spreadsheet here.
Currently accepting collaboration requests for Summer 2026. To get in touch, please email at [email protected].
Articles
The Elysian
A guest essay exploring ecological thinking as a better framework for understanding and caring for the internet than the techno-determinism that dominates mainstream discourse about it. Available in print as part of Elysian Press' Internet Sovereignty pamphlet.
The loading room (2026)
Pilot Magazine
What are the internet's liminal spaces? Loading errors and broken links shatter the illusion of seamless connectivity of the internet, perhaps as a radical reminder of our digital dislocation and a rare moment of shared humanity.
It's Nice That
A practical guide to navigating social media as an artist today, exploring whether the antidote to algorithm anxiety involves reframing your online presence as an act of curation and community-building rather than content creation.
Books
Personal essays
Who gets to be cool now? (2025)
Read my other personal essays on my Substack.
Selected Publications
Precious Metals
Silver, chain, nail, microSD card
Lockets are typically worn on a chain around the neck, containing a photograph or small item of special value, such as a lover's lock of hair. Intimate memories were stored on a microSD card, then cast in silver. A finishing nail was bent to fasten the locket to a silver chain.
I Can Eat Glass
Inkjet printing on cardstock
“I can eat glass, it does not hurt me” is a phrase coined in the mid-1990's, translated into over 150 languages. Purposefully absurd, the phrase was thought to demonstrate your comprehensive understanding of a language beyond typical tourist phrases, convincing others you are an “insane native.”
The phrase had not yet been translated into a machine-first language. It was manually punched into an IBM punched card, used to store and retrieve computer data from the 1890s through the 1970s.
Digital Decay
Inkjet printing on leaves
Digital decay refers to the gradual obsolescence and degradation of digital data. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun distinguishes between memory and storage in The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future Is a Memory, highlighting how all of our data requires constant regeneration-it's erasable, forgettable, and impermanent.
Images and phrases exploring digital decay, such as a figure of the memex and an internet meme, “I’ll send you digital flowers so they won't ever die,” were transferred to fresh leaves using an inkjet printer.
Good Sign-Offs Volvelle
Print wheel chart device
Good Sign Offs is a popular Are.na channel, containing poetic and sometimes silly ways to sign off an email. I designed a volvelle to have these email sign-offs ready at my computer.
Ocean Sounds
Acrylic on conch
Seashell resonance refers to the folk myth that you can hear the sound of the ocean by placing your ear to a conch shell. When I first visited my grandmother's hometown of Podgora, Croatia, she gave me this conch shell to take home. I recorded the ocean sounds at the beach in front of my grandmother's house, and ran a Python script to convert the .wav file to binary. Digits were hand-painted on the interior of the conch shell.
Talks + Performances
All Roads Lead to Philosophy (2026)
Wikipedia
If you click the first hyperlink on any Wikipedia article and keep repeating this, there's a 97% chance you'll eventually land on Philosophy — a phenomenon that reveals how online knowledge structures reflect our collective agreements about how we define and connect ideas. First popularized in a 2011 xkcd webcomic, this "Philosophy Game" is the subject of the Road to Philosophy (road-to-philosophy.com), an interactive web app that visualizes the network of article connections, with a performance mode using the Wikipedia API, a colour-shifting backdrop, and generative soundscape. This lecture series explores how knowledge is organized and negotiated in the commons through discussion and a live demonstration of the app.
On digital composting (2025)
Fleuron
Digital composting is the process of facilitating the decay of online matter. This facilitated workshop explored how to intentionally delete data that no longer serves us.
The Internet's Root System (2025)
Niteskul
This workshop explored ecosystem-thinking in the context of the internet and how it can be a pedagogical tool for nurturing relationships of care and intention with technology. Participants mapped out their own digital biomes.
Web
Sharing Screen
Living Web Institute
Sharing Screen is an internet home tour series hosted by Matthew Prebeg and Kristoffer Tjalve. Each episode welcomes us to step into the landscape of a internet-native designer or artist who works with the web as a medium. We browse together, and explore their work, open tabs, and personal archives to trace a picture of the world through their eyes. It is an invitation inside the communal computer room to share space, screen, and stories.
Video Essays
See my YouTube channel for a collection of my video essays.