SANGHEE, Oneroom-Barbel, 2022, Interactive VR, single-play, 15min ©SANGHEE

At a moment when the term “media art” is overused in a world where anything can become media, I encountered someone who truly seems a media artist.

SANGHEE drew attention with the VR work Oneroom-Barbel (2022–2023). In it, each time a player finds a jellyfish, they hear stories from people who once lived in one-room apartments (studios). The work reminds us that memories of one-room life do not evaporate; instead, they remain, and are amassed as the “Babel” of memory—culminating in a tower at the end. Beyond the process and meticulous setup, a notable point is the artist’s recognition of VR’s built-in assumptions about “normal” body metrics.

Learning that VR malfunctions when users’ bodies are too large or too small, SANGHEE created a barrier-free version of Oneroom-Barbel to embrace more audiences—designed so wheelchair users can enjoy the work by gazing at jellyfish without physical movement.

SANGHEE, Worlding···, 2023-2024, Interactive VR, Single-Play based on a local network, 20min ©SANGHEE

Among the frustrations of VR, the artist cites how stories vanish the moment the headset comes off—its ephemerality. This led to conceiving an asynchronous online game in which prior users’ data mingles with that of current users. Worlding··· (2023) uploads a map image to a server when a viewer finishes playing. On the first floor, the printout of each visitor’s VR result (a map image) is produced; in the basement, all of those data merge into a single terrain. All elements are networked, so through an asynchronous system the virtual play accumulates tangibly within the exhibition.

At the same time, the artist does not naively “fix” VR’s shortcomings. The industry holds a powerful desire to connect people’s senses and a belief that VR will deliver superior experiential states (though it repeatedly fails, clumsily mimicking reality). The only medium that fully fuses a user’s bodily sense in VR with a wholly tactile experience is cinema. Real VR remains uncomfortable and nauseating; the supposedly “fantastic” experience struggles to reach the actual player. For SANGHEE, VR’s incompleteness is not to be hidden but highlighted. Describing VR as “a world like a shell from which tactile sense has vanished,” the artist juxtaposes the aging hands in the world of Worlding··· with glimpses of the real player’s hands through gaps—accentuating the disjunction.

Most recently, the artist adopted the format of a Table Talk Role-Playing Game (TRPG) for Conversational Map for Encounters (2024). Eschewing win-lose structures, the work centers on dialogue. Together with collaborator Seonghun, SANGHEE appears as a performer acting as Game Master to lead a conversational game-play performance. Pre-registered audience members join as players through dialogue with the GM, transforming into co-authors who fill in a blank map. In other words, players articulate the choices of their assigned characters and collectively build the story. A TRPG GM does not dictate unilaterally; instead, narratives are formed competitively and collaboratively through exchange.

SANGHEE, Conversational Map for Encounters, 2024, Roll paper attached to plywood structure, Stickers, dimension variable ©SANGHEE

In Conversational Map for Encounters, previous players’ data strongly shape the work. If a prior player drops an item, the next can find it—indeed, they can read the previous player’s sheet and even pull out items that person possessed. Sharing the same world means everything left behind carries forward. In this sense, the piece also functions as interactive art completed through audience participation.

While gaming is the through-line of SANGHEE’s practice, it intersects with performance and interactive art—and, pushed further, recalls strategies of photography. If photography “captures,” then the artist’s work shares with it a will to hold on to what readily dissipates. Across shifting media, the consistent essence is encountering audiences through story. As a media artist who chooses media appropriate to the tale at hand, SANGHEE’s practice can be likened to a storyteller’s journey.
 


1. Visualization by designer Jiyeon Kim.

References