HEADER/FOOTER GALLERY: Hyun Ju Kim (ex-media)
Hyun Ju Kim (ex-media)
Working as a media artist Hyun Ju Kim (ex-media) has been exhibiting various digital experimental films, interactive installation and robotic art nationally and internationally. Her computer interactive installations and performance projects deal with posthuman conditions in the techno-cultural society, exploring the notion of identities in such an environment with ubiquitous digital technologies. In her recent works, she has been creating artistic vocabularies to deal with the issue of the body in the techno-society and the ontological and epistemological relations of human, machine, algorithm and things in the time of ‘non-human turn. Previously as assistant professor of art at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Kim has been teaching and researching in the area of convergent media and art at the Seoul Media Institute of Technology. She is also the main artist and the director of Expanded Media Studio, a visual & media arts research group at SMIT. Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including “ISEA 2019” at ACC (Korea, 2019), “404 International Festival of Art & Technology”(USA, 2019), “Digifesta” (Korea, 2010), “Continuum” at the George Segal Gallery(USA, 2009), ImageMovementSound Festival (USA, 2005 ), Sixth International Digital Art Exhibit and Colloquium(Cuba, 2004), Toronto Online Film Festival(Canada,2002), International Audio Visual Creation Festival of Navarre (Spain,2002) and ”Media[Less] Medium” at the Boston Center for the Arts(USA, 2002).
Pieces of Me
2013
‘I connect and wait for them. Whether they are known to me or not, I do this until they find pieces of me and visit me to like or retweet me. Broken into pieces of finite bits, my body (“pieces of me”) is spread to the endless cybernetic space, intermingled with other bodies and inter-connected among altogether after all. They are our bodies, with all sorts of emotions, and with the history and the memory of the past that are dismantled and re-constructed in this cyberspace. Are we now part of this emotional collective? Nevertheless, ever more emptiness overwhelms me.’
Through the installation and the performance works in this exhibition, I intended to bring forward the ironic status of being connected or networked, and the subject matter of the distributed body and identity as parts of emotional collective. The abundance of relationships in our networked life seems not to replace human being’s existential loneliness inside us but to deepen it even further. For the work [Pieces of Me I, II], I retrieved real-time tweets of “cyber-loneliness” from the unspecified users of the Twitter which are displayed as a part of video projection, refreshing its search by every 90 seconds. The existence of “me” is scattered out through the air and the projector-lit space around the body of the performer and the viewer. Serving as a symbol of the technologic console and as an agent telematically connected to the virtual SNS space, the TweetBots send tweets to Twitter while interacting with the viewer in the gallery space. The immaterial physicality of the digital is embodied ironically in the work of [Pieces of Me III-FalseBody]. The image of digitally represented body is laser-etched and cut into pieces so that viewers can a piece bring home and upload its status to the Facebook. I wonder if it is possible to bring these distributed pieces of the body back to the cyberspace. The exhibition co-exists in both the physical gallery space and the SNS space of the Facebook.
Dmorph
2002
Dmorph’ is a video portrait, dealing with the uncanny feeling about self identity morphing into a cyborg identity.
Since I was deeply involved in and dependent upon technology, I was continu ally conscious about it. It was an inescapable process for me to portray myself as a cyborg in this technological landscape. I documented myself with a video camera and placed the video images within 3D graphics, creating a cyborg image.
It visualizes the amplification of the anxiety through the process of a woman, the artist, becoming a cyborg; starting from pure video image into 3D graphics, continually switching back and forth between the two starting from pure video image into 3D graphics, continually switching back and forth between the two extreme mode, and finally exploding under the maximum stress extreme mode, and finally exploding under the maximum stress while remaining only a creature, shocked while remaining only a creature, shocked by the process of morphing, trembling, and still blinking its humanlike eyes in silence.by the process of morphing, trembling, and still blinking its humanlike eyes in silence.
The movement of a red light emitted from an Apple Pro mouse and its sound were added to build up the The movement of a red light emitted from an Apple Pro mouse and its sound were added to build up the mood. It is very much blmood. It is very much blurry and slow in its motion in the beginning so that viewer cannot recognize it as urry and slow in its motion in the beginning so that viewer cannot recognize it as the movement of mouse. By overlapping the woman’s face, the woman is imagined to be wandering the movement of mouse. By overlapping the woman‟s face, the woman is imagined to be wandering around the city landscape, but her actual position is in front of monitor, consaround the city landscape, but her actual position is in front of monitor, constantly and nervously clicking tantly and nervously clicking the mouse at the hand. However, this is not obviously shown in the video, but the viewer can sense it the mouse at the hand. However, this is not obviously shown in the video, but the viewer can sense it through the visual and aural elements.through the visual and aural elements.
The 3D graphic body was modeled and rendered after experiencing photos and videos ofThe 3D graphic body was modeled and rendered after experiencing photos and videos of the woman. the woman. Although the rendered images are very similar to the actual woman, they are very metallic or plastic, dry Although the rendered images are very similar to the actual woman, they are very metallic or plastic, dry and lifeless. This artificial imagery serves as a metaphorical means to implicate the properties of the and lifeless. This artificial imagery serves as a metaphorical means to implicate the properties of the machine, the technological and themachine, the technological and the virtual. Layering the 3D face on top of her actual one (with half opacity) virtual. Layering the 3D face on top of her actual one (with half opacity) allows for a mutational impression, resembling the cyborg.allows for a mutational impression, resembling the cyborg.
