Installation view of 《Data Composition》 (Sejong Museum of Art, 2021) ©GRAYCODE, jiiiiin

From Friday, January 15 to Friday, March 5, 2021, Sejong Center will present the sound-art exhibition 《Data Composition》 at Gallery 2 of the Sejong Museum of Art for 50 days. This exhibition is the result of the first open-call project reflecting Sejong Center’s aim to become an “open space.” The open call offered curators and artists active in Korea an opportunity to freely utilize the Sejong Museum of Art’s exhibition spaces for their artistic projects, with full budget support for the selected proposals. This both demonstrated Sejong Center’s identity as an “open museum” and drew considerable attention. Out of a total of 48 applicant teams, the sound-artist duo GRAYCODE, jiiiiin (Taebok Cho, Jinhee Jung) was finally selected. Through the sound-art exhibition 《Data Composition》, the two composers will offer audiences a chance to look at the world of 2021 from a new perspective.

As the coronavirus pandemic spread, our lives changed in unprecedented ways. Individuals’ movements came to be recorded in virtual space via QR codes, and invisible virtual systems began to surveil us. Because we cannot fully grasp the reality of virtual space, we imagine an unknown realm like the cosmos and only infer its immense scale and complex mechanisms. Yet for humanity living in the 21st century, data is as natural as air; the figures we call “big data” attest to this. Medicine, science, and technology were digitized long ago, and the amount of data accumulated daily through social media is truly enormous. In fact, the pixel data of photos held by Facebook is said to exceed all the pixels processed by Kodak over decades, which proves the point. Ultimately, we are exposed to quantities of information that were once unimaginable. Interactions among the data derived from our behaviors ceaselessly reproduce new things.


Installation view of 《Data Composition》 (Sejong Museum of Art, 2021) ©GRAYCODE, jiiiiin

《Data Composition》 leads us into this abyss of data that surrounds us yet remains immeasurable. A space saturated with audiovisual data incessantly stimulates visitors’ hearing and sight, and those who enter become part of big data through the time they spend on a linked web page. The data that interacts with visitors continues to accumulate and evolve, and—though not immediately—gradually and intimately produces clear effects and changes in the audiovisual elements resonating through the gallery.

The new changes arising from present actions open infinite possibilities for the future, going beyond mere retrospection of the past. The ceaseless accumulation and unpredictability of big data speaks to the life of humanity today. The changes shaped collectively by everyone will reach the eyes and ears of other visitors who come to the exhibition later. When this 50-day exhibition concludes, that data will become an album—in other words, as we live through 2021, it will be a song composed by all of us.

This exhibition is the outcome of translating current social phenomena—and the artists’ reflections along that trajectory—into multiple senses such as sight and hearing, and of expanding those results into works that communicate with the audience. Through 《Data Composition》, it offers a small opportunity to gauge the resonance of the world in which we live.

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