March 2018 – Seung hyun Kim

March 21, 2018

Photographic Project Proposal

Photography as a communication tool

Background

With the development of technology, the way of communication has been changed. We have another space to experience and communicate, that is virtual space. We always bring our laptop and smart phones everywhere we go. Virtual experience is getting more realistic and immersive. Art goes through this technological changes day by day. More and more artists choose to use technology as a media to present their ideas.

Art also has been changed. We could see an overseas exhibition without being there on Youtube and search a variety of images in different angles on Google. Artists make their own website for portfolio and upload all the information about their career and pictures of works. It became common that art galleries and museums share posters, information and installation view of exhibitions to promote them. That is to say, There is Internet before real exhibition. While searching for exhibition to go on the internet, we experience works and exhibitions on the screen as images before we get there.

Questions about physical work and virtual image

I think, as an artist who makes physical works, it is time for me to consider about the relationship between physical work and virtual image, not even photography work, the image of physical work.

For example, I made my idea into physical work. And I put it in the studio or gallery and took some photos of installation view. After then, I remove my work and put it somewhere in the corner just like a packing for moving. I have some images of my work and I submit some applications to other galleries or supporting programs for artists with this images. Also I upload this images on my portfolio website.

It makes me think about the relationship between my physical works and virtual images of them including my photography works. Which one is real final work? I decided to think all of them as real work and arrange them into the whole context of my work by giving them different role.

Physical Work : Isolation in repetitive plane

I’m interested in repetition and pattern in the city architecture. I try to capture anxiety and confusion in formative arrangement of buildings. I usually make installation works using industrial materials such as stainless pipe, cement and acrylic mixed with graphic images.

City Creation Plan / stainless pipe, polyester / variable dimension / 2018

Group exhibition, 333, installation view (on), 2017

Group exhibition, 333, installation view (off), 2017

Group exhibition, 333, inside detail, 2017

No more earth in our space / cement, acrylic / variable dimension / 2017

Underground space drawing / ink on paper / 294 x 210mm / 2016

Images on screen

I often encounter alien landscape of the city and take a photo with my iphone. I zoom in the specific scene until it full the screen. For me, the images that I have taken are abstract, floating images of city where I live in. They are close to graphics. So I decided to show these images on the screen, not on the printed paper. If they are printed and put on the wall with frames, they would be landscape snapshots of city which we can see everywhere. I think they should be virtual and unmaterial.

Photography as a communication tool

I want to arrange my photography as a tool for visual communication. So I would like to sequence images for storytelling visually. Storytelling could be a strategy to communicate well in my entire work process.

While working on exhibitions, I often feel that I could not communicate with audiences and get a feedback about my work. That’s because exhibition is very temporary practice and I don’t have enough chance to meet audiences except exhibition. Also, it’s because there is no effort to explain how audiences can enjoy contemporary art and at the same time, people don’t pay attention to contemporary art, especially in Seoul. Some art museums and galleries try to offer the opportunities for public to meet artists such as art workshops or artist talks, but sometimes it doesn’t work well or there is no further conversation between artists and audiences.

I think that “artists as a ethnographer” which was introduced in the class could be a solution to improve communication with public. With reference book “Doing visual ethnography”, I try to arrange my photography works and strategy to improve communication method.

Just as reality is not solely ‘visible’ or observable, images have no fixed or single meanings and are not capable of capturing an objective ‘reality’.

The connection between visual images and experienced reality is constructed through individual subjectivity and interpretation of images.

It is not solely the subjectivity of the researcher that may ‘shade’ his or her understanding of ‘reality’, but the relationship between the subjectivities of researcher and informants that produces a “negotiated version of reality”

Sarah Pink, Doing visual ethnography

March 20, 2018

The Big Kiss, Annie Abrahams, 2008

Annie Abrahams was born in the Netherlands in 1954 and has lived in France since 1985. She gained a Doctorate in biology and a graduate in fine arts. She is a performance artist based on internet, networked platform. She explores the possibilities of communication and relationships mediated by machine. She creates the networked performances collaborating and communicating with other artists at a distance using the webcam interface.

The Big Kiss

The Big Kiss is a performance installation present in 10th October 2008, from 7:00 to 10:00 pm in Brooklyn, New York. Annie Abrahams performed using the webcam network to meet and kiss on the divided screen.

“What’s contact in a machine mediated world? What’s the power of the image? How does it feel to kiss without touching? Does the act change because we see it? What does it mean to construct an image with your tongue? And is there still desire? Does the act provoke it? What’s contact in a machine mediated world?”

-Annie Abrahams, The Big Kiss, http://www.bram.org/toucher/TBK.html

Communication and Intimacy mediated by machine

She experiments human behavior in digital era. We communicate with others virtually and gain a physical safety. We put our bodies in our room, make a relationship or escape from it easily with on and off button. In this era, Could we communicate and make a intimate relationship without seeing each other? What kind of communication is it? or what kind of intimacy is it? Could we replace the word “relationship” with the word “network”?

We never reach out to complete communication both in physical and virtual world. There is alway misunderstanding, misreading and disconnection which makes isolation and loneliness. The thing is that we always fail to communicate correctly. With all this technological developments, though, communication was fated to fail. In my opinion, this misunderstanding and disconnection create chaos. And chaos is tool for new possibility. Annie Abrahams accepts this chaos and make it performance art. By doing so, she suggests a different form of intimacy that is in between loneliness and togetherness just like what human behave behind the on-off machine.

“The projects situate a condition of lonely togetherness, of life constructing a commonality, of being together and sharing this condition of co-responsibility, of scripted auto-organisation.”

-A question of control?, Trapped to Reveal-On webcam mediated communication and collaboration, Annie Abrahams.

“My thinking is more about communication: about, on the one hand, the desire of being close with someone and, on the other, the necessity of restricting one’s openness, of closing oneself, of retreating from intimacy.”

-Annie Abrahams, Allergic to Utoias interviewed by Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Digicult

“We reveal a big spectacle of loneliness… of misunderstanding, poetic situations conditioned or not, failed attempts, frustrated desires… what I call a connected world finally disconnected!…”

Nicolas Frespech participating artist, Reactions Experiences, Trapped to Reveal-On webcam mediated communication and collaboration, Annie Abrahams.

The “Big” Kiss

I guess that “big” means the size of territory that this networked kiss could embrace compared to physical kiss. Kissing through the webcam at a distance embraces the distance between participants and also makes possible viewers engage in The Big Kiss with their eyes.

March 13, 2018March 13, 2018

Telematic Dreaming, Paul Sermon, 1992

Telematic dreaming is interactive installation by Paul Sermon. In this work, people can communicate with the projected image of other people who are in separate place. Audiences and performers make collaborative movement through the video screen and projector. They pay a lot of attention to synchronize their movement and to communicate correctly like they could touch each other. It is clear that the projected image is not a real and just a flat, light image. Even though there is nothing physically, people give some space to image. We all know that the image on the bed is not a real person, but still people act like an image is a real. What makes it real?

In my opinion, ‘real’ is an empty image. If some clues satisfy the sense of real to some extent, people could make a real in their own way. In short, ‘real’ is replaceable. Therefore it is an empty image that we could fill it with temporary reality.

We will have to accommodate notions of uncertainty, chaos, autopoiesis and contingency to a view of the world in which the observer and observed, creator and viewer are inextricably linked in the process of making reality – all our many separate realities interacting, colliding, reforming, and resonating within the telematic noosphere of the planet.

-Roy Ascott, “Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace,” 1991, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality

In this perspective, Telematic Dreaming captures the way we perceive something as a real. It suggests participators to collaborate with others to make a reality using their body. By doing so, they can connect and communicate with others who are at a distance, as they really meet face to face.

Telematic art reminds me of a television live program that was produced in 1983 in South Korea. It was the search campaigns for families separated by Korean war. This program lasted total 138days, from 22:15 pm, June 30 to 4:00 am, November 14 in 1983. The total live broadcasting time was 453hours 45minutes. Through this program, 100,952 application were submitted, 53,536 stories were introduced and 10,189 separated families were reunited. This broadcasting program triggered the official exchange visits of separated families from North Korea and South Korea. This event was the representative example that shows the social impact and possibility of telematics and television in South Korea.