Media Art Gallery, 1st Floor, DDP Design Lab, through January 29
Next-generation media art exhibition under the theme of ‘Cosmic Life’
The 2022 Seoul Light exhibition <Backpacking to the Universe> is being held at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (hereinafter DDP) through January 29 of next year. This exhibition interprets this year’s Seoul Light theme of ‘Cosmic Life’ through the experimental works of next-generation media artists.
<Backpacking to the Universe> is an exhibition project carried out as part of Seoul Light to discover and nurture next-generation media artists. Through the <Backpacking to the Universe> exhibition, DDP aims to reestablish itself as a place that introduces the creative works of emerging media artists.
The works of five next-generation media artists, discovered and selected directly by DDP, can be seen at the ‘Media Art Gallery’ and the ‘Transparent Media Wall,’ DDP’s permanent media art exhibition spaces. The works reinterpret reflections on the universe through media projection and 3D digital art, adding each artist’s own creative interpretation.
Two works are introduced at the ‘Media Art Gallery,’ where immersive media art is realized through projection mapping and sound that fill the entire space. ‘Ko Hui’ explores the various relationships connected to sound, expressing the universe as audiovisual art using light and sound. ‘Hyun Jiwon’ likens the Earth and the universe to a garden, capturing in media art humans who covet resources while roaming through the garden.
Three works are introduced on the ‘Transparent Media Wall,’ a large-scale video panel formed by connecting eight transparent OLED panels into one. ‘Oh Soohwan’ uses 3D motion graphics to tell the story of a spaceship that returns to an Earth devoid of any signs of life after a long space exploration and examines the past using space-time reproduction technology. ‘Lee Hyunjin (ZEEN)’ presents the figure of a human walking while spreading infinite waves toward the universe, shown through various shifting camera angles. ‘Byeon Giwoong (BYEONKI)’ views the universe as an inner world and presents a work in which a virtual figure realized through 3D graphics freely roams the universe of the inner world.
Rather than viewing the universe as a fantastical space or an unexplored frontier, the <Backpacking to the Universe> exhibition imagines, from design and architectural perspectives, the ways of life, diverse modes, and spatial compositions that could be envisioned in the universe, interpreting them through media projection and 3D digital art.
This year’s Seoul Light kicked off its start with the <Seoul Light Autumn> event. Held over 10 days from September 30 to October 9, <Seoul Light Autumn> marked the first step toward ‘Cosmic Life.’
It presented the cheerful and exciting walk of ‘Cosmo Walker,’ a virtual figure walking the path toward a better future within the infinite space of the ‘universe,’ as the first step forward into space. During the event period, approximately 370,000 visitors came to DDP.
Lee Kyoungdon, CEO of the Seoul Design Foundation, said, “Starting with the <Backpacking to the Universe> exhibition, we will make it possible to encounter, every year at DDP—likened to a spaceship that has landed in the heart of the city—the works of next-generation media artists who will lead the future.”
▲ BYEONKI <Meditation> This is a work that assumes the infinite universe to be each person’s inner world. The artist realized in 3D graphics the figure of a character freely roaming a virtual inner world. Viewers confront the virtual inner space from a third-person perspective and come to recall their own motivations for meditation.
▲ Ko Hui <Composition for Sound Objects No. 5> Sound objects that autonomously roam through space are read and played by regions that proceed at regular intervals. Through these moments, an ecosystem of living sound is formed, and an attempt is made to sense sound in new ways. The sound objects hold a relationship between sound and form under the rules that a sound’s information (pitch, timbre, volume, etc.) must be revealed in the form of the sound object, and that movement and the generation of sound must exist along predictable lines. The succession of moments in which sound objects are played departs from the fixed progression of conventional staff notation and twists the time axis upon a predictable flow. Before long, the space where the sound objects reside becomes the score itself, forming an ecosystem of sound and a universe of sound.
▲ Hyun Jiwon <SOME YARD 22.01: A Certain Garden of a Square Yard 22.01> Humans repeat creation and dissolution under the desire for self-realization. This also means using finite resources infinitely for an endless cycle of creation. Humans have used Earth, our garden, as if it were infinite, and further covet the universe—a larger garden. The artist focuses on the resources and gardens behind humanity’s desire to explore, and asks: Where do the resources used until now go? What is the state of the present garden that has given up its resources? Can the garden we will cultivate going forward be said to benefit us? An extension of <SOMEYARD: The Wallpaper>, this work offers time to ask oneself these questions while roaming the virtual gardens of Earth and the universe.
▲ Oh Soohwan <LOOKBACK> In the near future, humanity has entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and most of the tasks humans had performed have been replaced by AI. ‘Exploration-2425,’ tasked with the mission of exploring space, completes its long assignment and returns to Earth. However, as his spaceship draws near Earth, it fails to find any signs of life from the planet. To find out what happened while he was away, he lands on the ground and uses ‘LOOKBACK,’ a space-time reproduction technology, to peer into the past.
▲ ZEEN <WAYVE> ‘WAYVE,’ the next work in the artist’s ‘Runway’ series, unfolds as the figure of a human walking while spreading infinite waves toward the universe is shifted through various camera angles. ‘WAYVE,’ the next work in the ‘Runway’ series, was created by combining the words ‘WAY’ and ‘WAVE.’ It is a work that visually realizes, in the form of ‘waves (WAVE),’ the influence that everyone born into the universe each creates upon the path (WAY) of the life they are given. The artist also wove his own character into the work using ‘Z,’ the first letter of his artist name, or ‘ZEEN,’ as a signature mark, and added meaning by placing a hat on it symbolizing 2023, the Year of the Rabbit.