We are pleased to present a screening of Oscar-nominated director Erick Oh’s newest animated short film, Namoo, created in collaboration with the six-time Emmy award-winning interactive animation studio, Baobab Studios.
The screening will be followed by a reception and artist talk with film’s director Erick Oh, producer Kane Lee, production manager Anika Nagpal and animator Jon Brower. The talk will be moderated by Edo Choi, film curator at the Museum of the Moving Image.
Remote participation in this event will be available through a virtual film screening and livestream of the artist talk. Please also note that the virtual screening capacity is limited.
The screening of Namoo and artist talk is presented through a partnership between SWPK, the Museum of the Moving Image and the Donghwa Cultural Foundation.
ABOUT NAMOO
Celebrating its U.S. theatrical version online premiere at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival, Namoo (meaning ‘tree’ in Korean), is a narrative poem come to life as an animated film and created as a virtual reality experience. The project is led by esteemed Korean director Erick Oh (who received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short in 2021 for Opera, and won Annecy’s Cristal Award for TV for The Dam Keeper Poems with Tonko House).
Namoo is an ode inspired by Erick’s grandfather’s death. The narrative follows the journey of a man from his birth up until the end of his life. As a young man, he falls in love with painting and as an adult, he falls in love with another person for the first time. But not all love lasts forever, and he eventually finds himself a broken man who puts a band-aid — literally — on his past woes and disappears into his work. Finally, as an old man he has the time to reflect on his life, what really mattered, and appreciate his amazing journey.
IN CONVERSATION: BARBARA LONDON WITH HARU JI AND EUNSU KANG
Wed, Dec. 4, 2019 | 6:30 PM
On December 4, New York-based curator Barbara London will be in conversation with artists Haru Ji and Eunsu Kang, whose provocative work is featured in the 2019 Korean Media Arts Festival. The three will discuss how technology inspires artists to be fearless about experimenting with evolving tools and advance their practice.
Barbara London is a longtime media art curator, writer and professor who founded the video exhibition and collection programs at the Museum of Modern Art, where she worked between 1973 and 2013. Her new book, Video/Art, The First Fifty Years, is being released by Phaidon Press in January 2020.
Toronto-based Haru Ji and Pittsburgh-based Eunsu Kang both wear several hats, as media artists, researchers and professors engaged with human-machine interfaces and interactivity with A-Life and AI techniques. Their artmaking involves a profound understanding of hardware and software, which steadily undergo upgrades that challenge their innovations.
Together Barbara London, Haru Ji and Eunsu Kang will look at art and experimental research processes, in particular interactivity and what has been labeled “interface culture.”
Ever since the advent of the internet, an influx of data has become available from a variety of sources. As an era of Big Data has dawned upon us, the amount of unstructured data and the methods of its analysis have greatly increased, thereby intensifying the imperative to know the types of data to extract and filter, today a common interest in all fields including the arts.Living Data presents data-based works by Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield, Yoon Chung Han, and Eunsu Kang and collaborators. As artists and educators who have combined art and data in the labs of universities, they explore post-information age themes including the ethical issues in artificial intelligence, the privacy of biometric data, and the living systems of virtual environments.
Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield’sInfranet employs an artificial life agent with an evolutionary neural network that transforms urban infrastructural data into a virtual artificial ecosystem. Eyes by Yoon Chung Han utilizes biometric data to transform iris patterns into an interactive installation of musical sound and 3D-animated images. Eunsu Kang’sAural Fauna presents an unknown organism form, called aural fauna, that enigmatically reacts to visitors’ sound and touch.The three works presented in Living Data expand the boundaries of creative expression through their visualization of analyzed data, revealing a data-dependent artistic communication relevant to contemporary society’s data dependency.
ABOUT THE KOREAN MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL
Technoimagination, the theme of the Korean Media Arts Festival 2019, introduces to New York the unique situation and characteristics of media art in Korea, as a leader of IT, in a post-media or post-digital contemporary art era. Presented at The Sylvia Wald & Po Kim Gallery (SWPK) are the exhibition sub-themes Technoimagination: Memories in Time and Space and Technoimagination: Living Data, featuring works by Chan Sook Choi, Yoon Chung Han, Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield, Eunsu Kang & Collaborators, Hahkyung Darline Kim, Beikyoung Lee, and Cheol-Woong Sim.
The Korean Media Arts Festival 2019 is organized by the Donghwa Cultural Foundation, sponsored by the Korea Foundation, and presented in collaboration with SWPK and Harvestworks. Technoimagination has been co-curated by Odelette Cho of SWPK and Kyung Ran Joo of FUSE Art Project.
PANEL DISCUSSION LIVING DATA: AI, A-LIFE & DATA ART
Thurs, Oct. 24, 2019 | 6:30 PM
Join us for a panel discussion with Deborah Levitt (Assistant Professor of Culture and Media, The New School), Margaret Schedel (Assistant Professor of Music at Stony Brook University) and Technoimagination: Living Data artists Yoon Chung Han (Eyes), Haru Ji (Infranet)and Eunsu Kang (Aural Fauna), moderated by Xin Wang (independent curator and art critic).
Within the context of the Technoimagination: Living Data exhibition, the panel will examine the use of artificial intelligence, artificial life, and data in art. The discussion will also shed light on the ways in which the Living Data artists are incorporating these media in their practices to explore post-information age themes such as the ethical issues of artificial intelligence, the privacy of biometric data, and the living ecosystems of virtual environments. Read more
Ever since the advent of the internet, an influx of data has become available from a variety of sources. As an era of Big Data has dawned upon us, the amount of unstructured data and the methods of its analysis have greatly increased, thereby intensifying the imperative to know the types of data to extract and filter, today a common interest in all fields including the arts.
Living Data presents data-based works by Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield, Yoon Chung Han, and Eunsu Kang and collaborators. As artists and educators who have combined art and data in the labs of universities, they explore post-information age themes including the ethical issues in artificial intelligence, the privacy of biometric data, and the living systems of virtual environments.
Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield’sInfranet employs an artificial life agent with an evolutionary neural network that transforms urban infrastructural data into a virtual artificial ecosystem. Eyes by Yoon Chung Han utilizes biometric data to transform iris patterns into an interactive installation of musical sound and 3D-animated images. Eunsu Kang’sAural Fauna presents an unknown organism form, called aural fauna, that enigmatically reacts to visitors’ sound and touch.
The three works presented in Living Data expand the boundaries of creative expression through their visualization of analyzed data, revealing a data-dependent artistic communication relevant to contemporary society’s data dependency.
ABOUT THE KOREAN MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL
Technoimagination, the theme of the Korean Media Arts Festival 2019, introduces to New York the unique situation and characteristics of media art in Korea, as a leader of IT, in a post-media or post-digital contemporary art era. Presented at The Sylvia Wald & Po Kim Gallery (SWPK) are the exhibition sub-themes Technoimagination: Memories in Time and Space andTechnoimagination: Living Data, featuring works by Chan Sook Choi, Yoon Chung Han, Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield, Eunsu Kang & Collaborators, Hahkyung Darline Kim, Beikyoung Lee, and Cheol-Woong Sim.
The Korean Media Arts Festival 2019 is organized by the Donghwa Cultural Foundation, sponsored by the Korea Foundation, and presented in collaboration with SWPK and Harvestworks. Technoimagination has been co-curated by Odelette Cho of SWPK and Kyung Ran Joo of FUSE Art Project.
Join us for a panel discussion with Richard Vine (Managing Editor of Art in America), Carol Parkinson (Executive Director of Harvestworks), Daniel Palkowski (composer and digital sound specialist) and Hahkyung Darline Kim, moderated by Raphaele Shirley (multimedia artist).
Within the context of the Korean Media Arts Festival exhibition Technoimagination: Memories in Time and Space, the panel will explore the relationship of time, space, memory and history and the ways in which artists use traditional and new media to re-evaluate our understanding of collective and individual memories.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
TECHNOIMAGINATION: MEMORIES IN TIME AND SPACE
The exhibition Memories in Time and Space is presented in two parts across SWPK’s 4th and 5th floor galleries. On the 4th floor, Memories in Time and Space I features works by Cheol-Woong Sim , Chan Sook Choi, and Hahkyung Darline Kim, in which the artists reveal the story of the modernization of Korea—with its distortions, lost identities of evicted migrants, and forgotten memories of marginalized groups during the War.
Cheol-Woong Sim, Thirty Years of the Unwelcomed Others, 2017-2019, interactive video.
Cheol-Woong Sim, through his interactive installation, exposes the historical distortions and propaganda latent in the English Almanac of the Chosen Government General. Chan Sook Choi reflects on the narrative of the displaced migrants of the village of Yangjiri, a community built for propagandistic purposes towards North Korea. Hahkyung Darline Kim reveals the lost memories of those marginalized during the Korean War. These memories of the past fluctuate between history and post-history as the viewer experiences them within the space-time of technoimagination.
Hahkyung Darline Kim, MemoRandom Project G (to know), 2015, video installation.
On the 5th floor, a different Memories in Time and Space II is presented. Beikyoung Lee’sThoughtful Space brings the viewer into the abstract and transcendental space-time between actual and virtual realities. In transcendental space-time, sensory memories extend the limitations of the world in which we exist.
Beikyoung Lee, Thoughtful Space, 2017, 3D animation, mapping and sound.
ABOUT THE KOREAN MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL
Technoimagination, the theme of the Korean Media Arts Festival 2019, introduces to New York the unique situation and characteristics of media art in Korea, as a leader of IT, in a post-media or post-digital contemporary art era. Presented at The Sylvia Wald & Po Kim Gallery (SWPK) are the exhibition sub-themes Technoimagination: Memories in Time and Space andTechnoimagination: Living Data, featuring works by Chan Sook Choi, Yoon Chung Han, Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield, Eunsu Kang & Collaborators, Hahkyung Darline Kim, Beikyoung Lee, and Cheol-Woong Sim.The Korean Media Arts Festival 2019 is organized by the Donghwa Cultural Foundation, sponsored by the Korea Foundation, and presented in collaboration with SWPK and Harvestworks. Technoimagination has been co-curated by Odelette Cho of SWPK and Kyung Ran Joo of FUSE Art Project.
Presented in the exhibition Technoimagination: Living Data, Yoon Chung Han’s Eyes is an interactive biometric data art installation that transforms human iris data into musical sound and 3D animated images. In this interactive installation, Han seeks to allow participants to explore their own identities through the unique visual images and sounds generated from their iris patterns using iris recognition techniques and sound synthesis. In the process, aesthetically beautiful and mesmerizing artwork, derived from the human body, is created through individual experience and multisensory interaction.
Biometric data reveals fascinating stories not only through the genetic information it provides, but also in its potential to explore narratives in relation to others, culture or society. While the body of biometric patterns provides a way to assess and distinguish individual identity, the techniques used to measure such patterns allow for standardization and loss of identity. Sonic interpretations of iris data could lead to new systems of measurement through the creation of one’s own “sonic signature,” possibly triggering new methods of interaction in the fields of art and science.
Eyes has featured in major international conferences and exhibitions including ISEA 2019 Asia Culture Center (Gwangju, Korea), ACM CHI 2019(Glasgow, UK) and Currents New Media (Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA).
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Yoon Chung Han is an interactive media artist, award-winning interaction designer and currently an assistant professor in the department of design at San José State University. Over the past 10 years, she has created a wide range of interactive 2D/3D audiovisual art installations including biologic art, data visualization and sonification, generative art and audiovisual interface design. She earned her BFA and MFA at Seoul National University, her second MFA in Design | Media Arts at University of California, Los Angeles, and holds a PhD in media arts and technology from University of California, Santa Barbara. Han regularly participates in international media art exhibitions and symposiums including ISEA 2017 (Colombia), ACM CHI 2017 (Denver, USA), IEEE VIS 2016 (Baltimore, USA 2016), ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany 2015), ACM SIGGRAPH 2013 (Anaheim, CA), and Geumcheon Art Space (Seoul, Korea, 2014).
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
DooEun Choi is an independent curator and art consultant based in New York. Choi has recently worked as co-curator of Aurora Biennial 2018 in Dallas, art director of Da Vinci Creative 2015/2017, and chief curator of Art Center Nabi in Seoul. Since 2000, she has also curated numerous international media art exhibitions in Kyoto, Beijing, Madrid, Geneva, Enghien-les-Bains, Istanbul, Montreal, San Jose, New York, Linz and many other cities across Korea. Choi’s previous projects include Han Youngsoo: Photographs of Seoul 1956–63 at ICP MANA (2017); Why Future Still Needs Us: AI and Humanity at Art Center Nabi, QUT Art Museum in Brisbane (2016–17); BIAN (INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL ART BIENNIAL), at Arsenal Montreal (2016); Mediacity Seoul 2012 Biennial, at Seoul Museum of Art; and ZERO1 Biennial 2012, at Zero1 Garage. DooEun Choi is currently working on Quayola: Asymmetric Archaeology touring exhibition and BIAN (INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL ART BIENNIAL) 2020 in Montreal.
Yoon Chung Han, Eyes, 2018, interactive art installation, 3D-printed objects.
ABOUT THE KOREAN MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL
Technoimagination, the theme of the Korean Media Arts Festival 2019, introduces to New York the unique situation and characteristics of media art in Korea, as a leader of IT, in a post-media or post-digital contemporary art era. Presented at The Sylvia Wald & Po Kim Gallery (SWPK) are the exhibition sub-themes Technoimagination: Memories in Time and Space andTechnoimagination: Living Data, featuring works by Chan Sook Choi, Yoon Chung Han, Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield, Eunsu Kang & Collaborators, Hahkyung Darline Kim, Beikyoung Lee, and Cheol-Woong Sim.
The Korean Media Arts Festival 2019 is organized by the Donghwa Cultural Foundation, sponsored by the Korea Foundation, and presented in collaboration with SWPK and Harvestworks.
