Urban Jeasaeng Device #4: Phantom Pain

Urban Jaesaeng Device #4: Phantom Pain

The media artist group Team TRIAD has consistently produced works that visually and audibly reconstruct various aspects of urban data. In this exhibition, they examine the perception of dystopian representation by processing the urban data of Seoul and Pyongyang into light and sound. Team TRIAD condenses images and sounds extracted from media sources related to these two cities into a spectrum, allowing audiences to engage with the cityscapes. Moreover, they convey experiences of material and immaterial projection, as well as severance, through the interplay of contrasting light and sound. At the entrance of the exhibition hall, a black box installation reproduces urban data from Seoul and Pyongyang using light and sound. The data from both cities is transformed into a color spectrum, with two projectors facing each other in a parallel configuration and illuminating each other. This arrangement allows the artists to explore concepts such as ‘film without a screen’ and ‘film that is not film,’ interpreting representation as a process of projection. In other words, they propose that representation involves projecting an image onto an object. This installation offers an engaging interactive experience for the audience. As visitors move through the space, their bodies obstruct the light path, altering the position and spectrum of the colors. Simultaneously, the projector’s light is cast directly onto the audience’s bodies in the absence of a screen, creating the effect that the space is segmented and fragmented. In essence, the audience’s body becomes the screen, and the images are presented in a segmented and fragmented manner. The spectrum for each city was created by blending various video sources from North and South Korean broadcasts and the Internet. These videos expose different political and social contexts on the same subjects and intersect and converge into singular pixels. Similarly, the soundscape is composed of newly created sounds resulting from multiple compression processes. These sounds, which fragment urban auditory experiences, are organized around specific themes, with thematic elements and images synchronized to the duration of the sounds. Furthermore, this work references light as a cinematic element of ‘film noir,’ which has significantly influenced dystopian representation. Team TRIAD offers the audience a sensory experience that blurs the boundary between reality and unreality through light and sound while also tracing the historical trajectory and implications of light through these cinematic concerns. This exploration prompts reflection on the instability and uncertainty of contemporary life on the Korean Peninsula.
 
Team TRIAD(Honam Kim, Minje Jeon, Gwangmin Hong)

2024, Two facing sculptures(2ch projector and speaker), variable dimensions, 8 min.