[Episode 8 of 8]

Vertiginous Data

Live Gallery Tour Deoksun Park

Korean Cultural Center New York (KCCNY) is pleased to present the last episode of
<Special Online Exhibition : Live Gallery Tour With The Curator>,
from the National Museum of Modern Art (MMCA).

This exhibition, featuring fourteen works by ten domestic and overseas artists/groups, presents various ways in which data, as a public utility, is creatively mobilized for aesthetic production through pieces on a range of data-based topics including big data, blockchains, and AI.

(Kor/Eng) Vertiginous Data Live Gallery Tour Deoksun Park

▲ Featured Artists: Forensic Architecture, Superflex, Zach Blas, Kim Sylbee, Kim Woonghyun, Rachel Ara, Cao Fei, Chris Shen, Simon Denny and Harm van den Dorpel

▲ Exhibition Overview

The exhibition title Vertiginous Data illuminates the economic and ethical aspects of data as communal utility, based on its non-neutral trait. In a time when everything, from aspects of our daily lives to national organizations, is analyzed and processed into “data,” data has come to govern not only individual lives but also social paradigms. The social impact of the digital environment serves as cause for hope but also concern regarding technologically powered visions of the future. Participating artists explore the aesthetic faculties of digital technology, discover the shortfalls of the digital environment, and identify uncontrollable chasms in their attempt to offer artistic reinterpretations.

The exhibition comprises three sections: the democracy and anti-feudalism of the digital mechanism; how contemporary artists utilize data; and new propositions using digital mechanisms.

The first section displays representative works by Forensic Architecture, Superflex, and Zach Blas. Analyzing and systematizing collected data, they attempt to reclaim civil rights and freedom from the anti-democratic events that result from global corporatism and government monopolies of information.

In the second section, Rachel Ara investigates the interrelation between sexuality, technology, and power structures by reflecting real-time data collections. Cao Fei offers a witty view of the ironies we see amidst the radical social shifts in the digital age using autonomously operative robotic vacuum cleaners, while Chris Shen compares the collection and dissipation of data to cosmic phenomena using 360 small robot balls.

In the third section, Simon Denny and Harm van den Dorpel experiment with the realm of creativity, the limitations of freedom, and the futuristic potential of technology with blockchains. Sylbee Kim highlights long-standing values that are revealed at each state whereby new technologies transform the human condition through the three keywords of finance, credit, and spirituality in the new video piece. Woonghyun Kim presents a video about a post-apocalyptic novel he wrote by randomly choosing an event and weaving together the resultantly produced data links.

Special Online Exhibition: Live Gallery Tour with the Curator(8)