JSUK HAN, Ambiguous Borderer, 2021, AI speakers, tripods, Dimensions variable ©OCI Museum of Art

In the exhibition 《Follow, Flow, Feed, Where I live》 at Arko Art Center in 2020, JSUK HAN showed a new media work, created by macro programs and Instagram live broadcasting tools to visualize the infinite cycles of feedback on Instagram as the information on Instagram shown on a smartphone is taken by another smartphone to broadcast live, and once again it was posted on the Instagram feed to transmit the scene as a live streaming.

The smartphone windows are continuously overlapped by endless incoming and outgoing of information, laying out like kaleidoscope, and the windows are reset by the program to repeat from the beginning when the windows are overloaded. This feedback systems, gradually accelerating and repeating to start over, seem to be an infinite cycle of a loop. However, the results are not given the same outcome. It is open ended, because some of situations like a participation from audiences and a disconnection of Wi-Fi may intervene.

In this solo exhibition at OCI Museum of Art, following the series of the smartphone social network system, JSUK HAN shows his new work, Ambiguous Borderer (2021) based on the mutual feedback between two AI speakers. Using the information on the artist’s notepad, one of the AI speaker tells the schedule with voice to send another speaker the information, and again the feedback is received from the speaker, as if the two machines have interactive conversation. This work is an interesting response to this period that the voice of Siri in the smartphone, notifying us time and whether, is more familiar than any other time.

However, the more important thing to look at in this work is that it has focused on a new circumstance made by feedback on errors that mechanical system cannot predict. It is evident that the first speech made by AI was a part of a running program based on the information saved in advance, but there came to be unpredictable errors when feedback from another AI is added. Listening to the conversation between AIs, it seems like the same contents are looping infinitely, but you can soon notice that the phrases are modified continuously by subtle errors. A digital program is a closed structure that operates only by numerical information without making variables by itself, but mechanical logic sometimes derives an odd result by failing to read the space between 0 and 1. This error makes the mutual feedback between AIs sound absurd conversation that deviates from mechanical logic.

JSUK HAN’s work is based on a feedback system that takes the limitations and flaws of machines that cannot perfectly simulate reality. His new work Derived from (2021) is a drawing series starting from a single point left on paper. The point is transformed continuously and multiplied into lines and planes by the copying process of a scanner. While transmitting the images, the unexpected variables, such as changes in the intensity of light, create more errors throughout the repeated process of copying. The interesting point is that the forms created by such unexpected coincidences are mutants that have similar patterns to the original. This drawing series, which looks like a cell proliferation process, can be an indicator of a new ecosystem formed through feedback between humans and machines.

JSUK HAN captured an axis that penetrates both the digital and analogue worlds as he invents a feedback system that accepts the errors of digital mechanisms. In his studio, there are high-tech equipment as well as machines that can be bought from an old electric shop, and he describes himself as a generation stuck in the middle of digital and analogue ages. I asked him if he would have any trouble handling and fixing the old machines that are almost out of order, and he said that he enjoys the process. Through the process of giving life to machines that can be otherwise thrown away, he practices a certain ‘connection’. In this perspective, the significant point in JSUK HAN’s work is that media ‘mediates’ something whether it is old or new media. Through this kind of connection, he wants to reveal a certain reality that is mediated through media.


JSUK HAN, Constellate, 2021, Second-hand speakers, metal rods, electric components, Dimensions variable ©OCI Museum of Art

Constellations (2021) by JSUK HAN, which was shown at 《New Media Art Special Exhibition》 in Seoul Arts Center recently, is an installation using dozens of secondhand speakers. In this work, he created a magnificent scene of flickering spark by repeating that metal rods attached to the speakers vibrates to connect and disconnect to electrode. The light and noise, made in the moment of connection between the negative and positive poles of electrodes, turns the whole exhibition space into a place where events occur constantly.

Two electrodes and numerous variables that intervene between receiving and transmitting create various aspects of the event. Audiences wandering around the exhibition hall without knowing where the light turn on or where the sound come from can sense the potential energy that filled in the darkness. As if the potential energy randomly explodes by the movement of electrons, and at the same time, as the light and sound arise inevitably, it presents the world itself which is infinitely changing. It is the world maintained by the principle of causation despite the unpredictable, non-linear variations.

Most of all, Constellations was very impressive because the spark and noise generated by the instant moment are somewhat similar to the star lights of galaxy or rain drop sounds heard from a forest, feeling like you are surrounded by the real nature. You can experience that the law of physics, made by the vast nature, are still working by the electronic media even in the exhibition space that is separated from the real world. In this work, the electronic signals of receiving and transmitting generate sounds, and it seems like a white noise that can lead audiences to the state of meditation. This effect is possible because the flash or sound made by electrodes is like an invisible frequency wave as if it is in the real nature. JSUK HAN makes us feel abstract reality, not by the representation of nature, but by the effect of signals made by the electric media.

It can be said that what JSUK HAN mediates through media is some kinds of ‘flow’ which is an intangible energy or wavelength that enables life phenomenon. The flow imposes the order, even making coincidence the force toward the inevitable consequence. Within that flow, the boundaries between nature and artificiality become blurred, and the mechanism of machines are also accepted as part of dynamics of nature. What I noticed from his work, making us experience the flow, was that the ecosystem formed by the hyper-connected network is also a part of complex system that is open to infinity.

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