prosthetic knowledge

IRIS by HYBE - Light Conditions 

The makers of this interactive installation / LCD Canvas got in contact again to demonstrate their work in different light conditions, and also reveal a bit more about the hardware used in it:

Expandable Matrix of Transmissive Monochrome LCD (90x90mm), Custom designed Arduino compatible controller board, DMX512, SPI, Kinect /

IRIS is a unique media canvas with matrix of conventional information display technology - a monochrome LCD. Through the phased opening and closing of circular-segmented black Liquid Crystal, IRIS can create various patterns and control the amount (size) of passing lights. IRIS is an interactive medium for visual simplicity which uses the passage of ambient light, not emission of light itself.

It is a selected and supported work by Da Vinci Idea Program(2012) at Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon, KOREA

Dongi Lee 

Four examples of recent work by South Korea’s most well-known Pop Artist:

Gallery 2 presents Dongi Lee’s solo show Garden of Uncertainty. Lee has spearheaded pop art in Korea and is well known for the character, Atomaus. The exhibition brings 13 paintings he produced from 2007 up to the present together, focusing on showcasing the broad spectrum of his world through diverse pieces we have never met under the same roof.

Mixture of seemingly inharmonious elements

Lee has attempted to combine the medium of acrylic painting with diverse subject matter and expressive methods. He created the Atomaus character through the combination of two celebrity cartoon characters, Atom (Astro Boy) and Mickey Mouse. Since 1993 when Lee first conceived Atomaus, he had no intention of lending any identity to the character. Likewise, he would not give any identity to this exhibition. In the show jolly, familiar works like Atomaus Eating Noodles and Flower Garden are harmonious with pieces that address profound, gloomy themes such as death and violence. His pieces on display vary in medium: animation images, SF images, and abstract images. In the Double Vision series produced in 2008, Lee fused heterogeneous genres into one scene.

Diverse references of K-drama, K-pop, art history, and philosophy

His work refers to pre-existing images rather than creating ones. Lee referred to Robert Morris’ conceptual work for I-Box; appropriated Caravaggio’s painting for A with the Head of A; and reinterpreted Freud’s portraits and religious themes. Works addressing his recent concern for K-Pop, or the Korean wave (Hanryu, the increase in popularity of South Korean entertainment and popular culture) is dominant. (In the art scene the term K-Pop is used to refer to different meanings, pop art that was pervasive since the late 1990s in Korea.) One example is a work that portrays Super Junior, an idol group. Lee took the motif of a Woman with a Mobile Phone from the image repetitively appearing in Korean dramas. He views drama characters perfectly manipulated as imaginary images similar to animation and game characters. Lee points out that contemporary people gradually become accustomed and desire to identify themselves with such images. These images have ambivalent features, sublimity and abstractness despite their superficial existence.

More examples of this exhibition can be found here. There is also an old site by the artist dedicated to his cartoon creation, Atomaus’, here

The Art of Hong Zi 

Artist creates works with distortion effect by painting on threaded canvas which is subsequently rethreaded. It is easy to see a connection to contemporary technological distortion aesthetics, but is actually inspired via a Buddhist background:

Hongzi’s works are the products of two repetitive tasks - piling up colored threads and breaking them up again …

… If so, what is the reason why the task needs to be emphasized? It is needed to consider that the career of Hongzi started from her Buddhist painting. Furthermore the effect of her career as such appears strongly as shown in her comparing her works to sand mandala or her introducing the themes of her works as the process of generation and extinction. If it is the case, it will be no problem to say the laboriously repetitive work for tying and untying threads is the transformed form of the laboriously repetitive work for producing Buddhist paintings. When considering such repetitive work is the process of practicing asceticism to empty the minds, there is no reason not to say Hongzi’s task is also an another form of asceticism. Hongzi’s task facing the fact there is no fixed form, tying and untying threads one by one, looks to be so faithful to the teachings of Buddhism.

You can discover more of the artist’s work at their website here

IRIS by HYBE - Gangnam Style 

Last week, I made a post about a fantastic installation called IRIS, a grid of transparent LCDs which mirrors visitors actions in creative patterns. It was very popular, appeared on the Tumblr Radar, and went viral. I sent an email to the team behind this about how popular it was, and they were really happy about it …

… Then, I receive an email from one of the developers this week:

I’m Han, creator of IRIS on your blog.

I’ve just uploaded addendum on IRIS for fun - actually by many requests. I hope you to enjoy it.

If you know the song in video, you will love it.

And here it is, a brief additional demonstration to the original, and probably the best combination of modern interactive art installation and K-Pop you will see today.

IRIS by HYBE 

Interactive installation is grid of transparent LCDs which display halftone and circular patterns whose display can emulate it’s viewers. A week ago, I covered a New Media exhibition in Seoul called ‘The Da Vinci Ideas Exhibition’ and was intrigued by this piece, hoping there would be a video of it. Well, the brilliant Creative Applications discovered it, which you can watch in the embed below:

Created by Korena collective HYBE, IRIS is a media canvas with matrix of conventional information display technology, that is a monochrome LCD.Through the phased opening and closing of circular black liquid crystal, IRIS can create various patterns and control the amount (size) of passing lights.

More Info and images can be found at Creative Applications here

Hwan Kwon Yi [이환권] 

South Korean artist whose works play on the human form with eskewed perspective.

Currently has a show at the Gana Art Gallery, Busan - more here

City of Illusion by Koo Bonseok (구본석展)

Art that creates cityscapes from arranged perforations on surface visible from back-light.

More Here

Cleaning Nam June Paik’s “The More The Better” at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, South Korea

As you can see from the last two images, cleaning a 60ft media display featuring 1,003 television displays is quite a task in itself (it is fantastic piece though, a personal favourite).

Asia’s Tallest Mural by Hendrik Beikirch 

A portrait of a fisherman, 70 meters tall in affluent Busan, South Korea - via Public Delivery:

During the last week of August 2012, German painter Hendrik Beikirch, created not only a stunning work but an iconic piece that stretches over 70 meters (230 ft.) high and is yet to be considered as Asia’s tallest mural. Located in South Korea‘s second largest city, Busan, this piece showcases a monochromatic mural of a fisherman, set in contrast with the Haeundae I’Park building at the background, constructed by renowned architect Daniel Libeskind.

The Haeundae I’Park is a residential building and is also a symbol for the rapid development and accumulated wealth in Korea, a poor country not too long ago. The mural that depicts an image of a fisherman represents a significant portion of Korea‘s population that has not been affected by the economic growth and until now, lives under very different circumstances compared to their affluent neighbors.

Responsible for this project is Public Delivery, an organization who has made waves across Asia and Europe through the promotion of contemporary art.

The artwork will be on display for an indefinite period of time.

More Here

Hyper-Matrix

Amazing installation is huge physical wall matrix of moving white cubes that act as a pixel display, put together by J o n p a s a n g for Hyondai.

Here is a video of the work in action - the first minute is a performance as seen in the GIFs above, but is also used to add texture to projected video:

2012 Yeosu EXPO HYUNDAI MOTOR GROUP _ full version. from yangsookyun on Vimeo.

If you still don’t believe the thing is real, check out this making-of video [here]

Discovered via the highly recommended Creative Applications

Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs To You 

Large-scale solo exhibition which was on at Japan’s Mori Art Museum of one of Asia’s leading female artists. Her works are sculptural, with both natural and technological forms - looks interesting:

Since the 1990s, Lee Bul has built an international career as one of the leading contemporary artists from Asia. Her oeuvre is dominated by sculptures that demonstrate a mastery of materials and techniques, including her celebrated Cyborgs and Anagrams series, hybrid machine-and-organic forms referencing critical theory as well as dystopian cinematic worlds; karaoke “pods” that evoke space capsules for eternal sleep; and glittering, spectral gures and cityscapes that seem to be falling into ruin. For over twenty years, it could be said that Lee, whose practice has spanned her home country’s transition from military dictatorship to democracy, has been on a quest for an elusive something . the ultimate physical form perhaps, or the ideal society. While showcasing her major works in the four sections “Ephemeral Presence,” “Beyond Human,” “Utopia and Dreamscape” and “From Me, Belongs to You Only,” in the “Studio” section this exhibition will present the drawings and models that also form the font of her ideas. The subtitle “From Me, Belongs to You Only” is also a message from Lee: her attempt to find the “something” for which she is constantly searching in a personal relationship with each individual viewer. Come and experience that message for yourself in the spaces at “Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs to You Only.”

More Here

Art of Kong Byung Hoon (공병훈)

Artist creates series of oil paintings of various cartoon character figurines (both Eastern and Western) which re-enact scenes from classic fine art.

Google Translated Artist Statement:

I am a masterpiece of classical art of four trillion figures by incorporating a comic book character will work. This classic image of each character and the story of the conflict is in order to screen the configuration of the elements of the classics, and several characters in comics Figures consist of this noble and solemn, based on the classic story of the story deals with the light of modern common.

  Cartoon movies we see mainly the configuration of each character’s personality is made by the story, but the character’s history, spatiality and time when the province changed the nature can not evolve any yiyagideun I will use these points. For example, in one of my work with American cartoon characters from Disney’s Tinker Bell Smurfs, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse cartoon Sonic and Crayon Japan, South Korea Pororo cartoon, game Angry Bird character and appearance of the character will range from the contents of a classic encounter. I ‘peuraedeurik Jameson’ means, according to neutral or critical pungjana motives and goals of their own, without any historical nonsense by a desire to work, so my work belongs to the pastiche.

  A canvas of classic and contemporary stories in the stories are different, each very different from each other, the subject of the story and characters, even the markedly different backgrounds can see that, so any story by story of the conflict can not be completed, original meaning is lost. one side of the story when you try to deploy the other side the same way that the story is interrupted, or when one of these two stories at the same time, not just as concentrated. Thus in the works increases, the story becomes more and more incomprehensible. a story that clearly will not be able to deploy. personality is too strong to bring up stories to one story every single one you can not deploy properly, or from where, do not know what the story was going to while everything is meaningless, ie the inner personality of each character is that the lack of.

More at the GAGA Gallery here (Korean)

Streaming by 라다운

Art series features noisy depictions of city scenes which are created using coloured electrical wire. Artist’s statement (via Google Translate, with obvious errors):

Everything that I live in an era of rapid change, or any other individuals. Each day of civilization due to its products are coming more and more accelerated way of life is not easy to adapt to.

Why is it so fast and the spirit of human life that is not working on the question of motivation was unraveled. At the heart of these changes invisible ‘flow’ has. ‘Flow’ is the result of using network communications, I think.

My work flow of the material invisible wires that connect at the same time the visual material is also an important motif. Such work is growing rapidly in the image of the wire material attached to the phenomenon of modern civilization visually and feels close to gekkeum are shown. Not sure the combination of colors unknown to the modern civilization has brought rapid change and conflict, human insecurity shows the development of the world more communication between people is becoming more active as easy. I called the wire as a medium for audience questions and these times are trying to communicate.

What Happened To Them? by Woo Sung Park 

Lifelike Sculptures of comic-book superheroes past their prime. Yes, the Hulk is sitting on a toilet there …

Currently being shown at the Gallery Golmok in Seoul - More here [Korean]

CLO 3D 

South Korean 3D CAD software developed specifically for professionals designing clothing:

CLO 3D is Easy-to-Use 3D Apparel CAD, enables you to design, to view 3D samples in real-time and to communicate easily with partners. It is possible to create a virtual sample photo-realistically within 1 hour using your 2D pattern. You can send 3D clothing data in network to colleagues, and it’ll enable you to communicate effectively with your team members across the globe. You can view in real-time the impromptu changes in patterns, designs, colors, fabric design with others. 

Here is a link to a gallery of pieces created with the software.

The same interface is also used for the company’s sister product for designing virtual clothing called Marvelous Designer.

You can find out more about CLO 3D here

(PS - You may need to click on some of the images above to see the animated version … Also, it’s weird that the female avatar / virtual mannequin always wears heels … )