Cycle 1

Concept: Following the 20th presidential election in Korea, I wanted to portray beauty of democracy and its hidden dark side. My goal was to articulate the irony of the rigid dichotomies between left and right, old and young, and Southeastern and Southwestern Korea balancing the power of the nation and protecting our democracy. With the emergence of social media, people began to access and believe in different information whether it’s true or not. The nation has become more polarized, and the politicians took advantage of the situation, disuniting the nation to gain more votes. With all the socioeconomic, generational, and regional conflicts and hatred, the polarization became uncontrollable to the point where the very purpose of the governance and elections degenerated into the survival of the party. No matter a plan was good or bad for the nation, each side would disagree with whatever the other side carried forward. One of the few times they agreed upon was when they wanted a pay raise. I got sick of the politicians having double standards towards each other(In Korea, we call this 내로남불, which means, “If I do it, it’s a romance, if you do it, it’s an infidelity.) and disuniting the nation, so I wanted to let my audience be aware of the danger of unconditional support towards certain political party which hinders the self-purification. In order to make rational decisions as voters, I thought it would be important to build mutual gratitude towards each other for bringing prosperity and democracy to the nation.

Methodology: Besides articulating my political thoughts, I wanted to explore the possibilities of texture and layering with the projections. Oded helped me install two projectors facing each other with a scrim in between them. I gathered videos of the poverty after the Korean war, Miracle of the Han River, the military dictatorship and the Democratization Movement, and Korea today with direct elections and added textures that would support the ideas. There was a live camera capture to individualize and highlight citizen power. It ended with intertwining red and blue waves which represents two political sides.

Next step: I think for the first cycle, I understood how to set up the layering of projections, how to add textures to them, and what effects they create. I think for the next step, I would like to add audio so the audience can follower and understand my intentions with the piece. I also want to explore interactivity with motion capture.