For a complete scene
Art critic Lee Jin-myeong
The movie ‘John Wick’ series is gaining craze-like support. Recently, modern art has been receiving more attention than contemporary art. Behind this phenomenon lies the nostalgia of contemporary people for analog. Analog is a product of transition. It was the era of art where hand-copying and hand-drawing were done. To be more specific, it was the era of the digital culture of supercomputers that placed the romantic world view on the tail of a comet and could confine and organize all the world's phenomena into 0s and 1s. It was a time when I was like an adolescent boy who existed as an interlude in the time transition of being the head of Comet. Analog has left an ever-changing mark based on instrumental reason. However, as we encountered the absolute realm of digital virtuality, we gradually became stranded.
Representative media of analog culture are the gramophone, film, and typewriter. This is the diagnosis of German media philosopher Friedrich Kittler. According to Kittler, these three media are the media that shattered the Romantic worldview. There are three representative cultures that make up the romantic worldview. These include hand-written musical scores, hand-drawn pictures, and transcribed literature. First, let's think about sound. We cannot hear all sounds. Choose something and listen to it. You can't hear the cicadas outside your house and the radio inside your house at the same time. The sounds we hear are selected sounds. Romantic scores also record only selective sounds. But the gramophone recorded all the sounds at the same time and played them to us. Thanks to this medium, we have learned about the nature of sound and the true nature of our mechanisms for responding to sound. Kittler accepted Lacan's theory and diagnosed the world created by the gramophone as the real world.
Painting, which was praised as a sublime object during the Romantic era, also experienced changes. Painting was an art form that told a story by creating a three-dimensional illusion on a flat surface. The history of painting was about expanding aesthetic consciousness to the level of the sublime by taking impossible risks in the limiting situation of a flat surface, developing more plausible illusionary forms and brushing techniques, and sophisticating them. However, the value of paintings collapsed as movies developed. This is because a movie that moves continuously with 24 frames per second was able to contain a richer story and enabled more imagination. (The aspect of the invention of the camera that caused the collapse of painting was smaller than expected.) Kittler called the world created by film an imaginary world.
The best medium of the Romantic era was literature. It was literature that could express all of the joys and sorrows of human emotions, human purpose, the narrative of human history, events, and descriptions of objects. The story he used to listen to while sitting on his mother's lap as a child and fall asleep while listening to it is now embodied in the boy. Even as the boy grows up, he accepts literature by listening to his mother's voice. Literature is the mother's voice. We all read Greek classics and German Romanticism in our mothers' voices. This is why literature is noble. Even when I read French naturalistic literature, I still read it in my mother's voice. By reading the text out loud under the guidance of your mother, you become completely immersed in the story. At this time, the reader feels a resonance and learns about the world. Of course, the same applies when reading bildungsroman (bildungsroman) such as Hermann Hesse or Thomas Mann, or social accusation literature such as Günter Grass. These authors' handwritten manuscripts have a huge aura. Handwritten literature is different from literature created by typewriters. A typewriter handles letters by organizing typesetting into uniform lines. Therefore, the author's perfect aura can no longer be captured. It is difficult to treat the overall picture of the world as pathos with letters assembled by typewriter. Due to the nature of the medium, typewriter writing is segmented, analytical, and prone to being buried in dry stories. The reason why 20th century literature had no choice but to stop at segmented and analytical descriptions or go in an experimental direction is related to the characteristics of the medium. Nevertheless, there was hope that the analog world, which was born in the 19th century and reached its peak in the 20th century, could usher in a better today than yesterday through technological advancement. Even if mechanical and instrumental reason left the myth of romanticism aground, the master of reason was still humans themselves. However, with the advent of digital civilization created by supercomputers, we began to predict the end point of human civilization. We are slowly witnessing the moment when digital civilization will reach its peak. And I feel anxious. This is because the emergence of artificial intelligence, or robots that surpass humans, may threaten humans who enjoy absolute sovereignty within the world. Of course, there is currently a sharp conflict between the progressive view that robots can solve all human problems and the pessimistic view that robots subordinate humans to robots. However, more weight is given to the opinion that the former perspective will lead the future.
We must talk about art from now on. What has been described so far is merely a supplementary means of explaining the work of artist Park In-seong. In the days when instrumental reason ruled everything, that is, in the analog days, painting did not compete with photography and film, but developed a completely different narrative. Painting from Classical Greece to the Romantic period, or even more narrowly from the Renaissance to the Romantic period, explored what the mirrored picture was like. Beginning with Impressionism in the 19th century, people began to think philosophically about what the mirror itself was. In other words, I began to explore the essence of the medium called painting. The horizons were expanded by turning the method of representation that had been handed over to photography or film into reflection on the medium. The essence of painting lies in the fact that it is flat. The painting is flat. Therefore, the history of the process from figuration to hemisphere, from hemisphere to abstraction, and from abstraction to the brushstroke itself was produced. This is what 20th century art looks like. However, the art of photography cannot go beyond the limitations of the developer program that developed the camera mechanism. Even if there is a work that makes photography look like abstract art, it is a reference to modern painting and is not an inevitable result of the history of photography.
Artist Park In-seong creates a primary formative world by cutting and pasting the camera film itself. This film is a product of the analog era. The shape of this combined film is reminiscent of a modern painting. Even though painting has moved to the modern time axis, it still has romantic elements. That is originality. Alternatively, it can be expressed as an autographic property. The primary result of artist Park In-seong's segmentation and disassembly of photographic film and reassembly and composition can be said to be the reconstruction of a romantic worldview through photography. However, this is filmed again and printed on a digital screen. At this time, the primary medium of an autobiographical nature is transformed into an allographic property. The artist projected the value of originality in painting, which was maintained from Romanticism to Modernism, onto the photographic medium and then brought it into the world of infinite replicability in the digital age. However, artist Park In-seong’s progressiveness is established at a deeper level. He has already said that the history of painting was a transitional process from the image reflected in the mirror (reproduction) to the mirror itself (essentialism of the medium). While tracing the historical process of painting, the author may have thought that the medium of photography also has something like historical narrative or essentialism. So, of course, you would have been curious about how the future of photography will progress. Photographs are governed by the program attached to the camera, regardless of the intellect, imagination, and sensitivity of the person taking the photograph. There is no choice but to be buried in the limitations of the program inherent in the camera. Even if there are photos that look abstract because their shapes are severely distorted, or photos that look semi-abstract because the boundaries of objects are erased, they are all transformed in the realm of representation. Fundamentally, all photographs are bound to the category of representation. Artist Park In-seong projects the grand conceptual adventures of modernist painters into the medium of photography. It is about thinking about the medium of photography itself. In order to overcome the limitations of representation, it was necessary to examine the essence of the photographic medium. Photography involves confining the subtle dispersion of the light source that enters the lens into film treated with a photosensitive material. Therefore, the basis of photography lies in the film itself. It is very significant that the author did not focus on the images formed on the film, but took issue with the film itself. Moreover, the circular frame created through the process of scanning, cutting, pasting, and combining film is in line with the formalism of modernism. That's by design. A very progressive way of thinking is that the content is great, but the form is overlooked. It is easy to focus on the thinking itself and miss out on the aesthetic category. Author Park In-seong applied rigorously refined formalism to transformative thinking, which can be said to be an outstanding idea.
Furthermore, there is a deeper meaning behind Park In-seong's understanding of the essence of photography as film itself. There are countless worldviews about media, but they are largely divided into two perspectives. One is the view that Marshall McLuhan defined as “an extension of human senses.” If this view is correct, a lever is an extension of the human hand, and a telescope or microscope is an extension of the human eye. It is said that humans have continuously evolved and developed media through their own reason in order to expand their sense of self. Another conflicting view is that of Friedrich Kittler. Kittler throws at us an infamous proposition: He said, “The media determines our situation.” According to Kittler, media are not created by human efforts or will, but develop on their own in accordance with social and historical conditions. And thanks to the media, humans have redefined their worldview for the better. That is what ‘technological determinism’ means. For example, it was not until the gramophone appeared that it became possible to truly think about sound. Modern writing became possible only with the advent of the typewriter. It was not until the advent of the camera that it became possible to think about the nature of visual culture. I think writer Park In-seong is closer to Kittler's descendant. As the author also studied the medium of photography, he was able to grasp the huge flow of visual culture created by humans thanks to that medium.
So what exactly is the complete scene that writer Park In-seong is pursuing? While still maintaining the mythology (originality) of the Romantic era and the rigor (formalism) of modernism, at the same time, a spirit of adventure is emerging to widen the entrance to the future even a little. In the end, the author shows us the confidence to willingly submit oneself to the fear brought about by the flood of books created by the digital age. To put it simply, the discourse of struggle and reconciliation that has never been simpler in Western cultural history is condensed in a series of screens shown by artist Park In-seong. As per the artist's detailed intention, the conflicting elements of romanticism, modernism, analog, and digital maintain a state of tension and support each other in the work. The complete scene pursued by the artist refers to visual thinking that allows the past, present, and future of visual culture to be reflected and predicted at the same time. The artist's visual thinking has now opened its doors. So, I sincerely hope that the author will soon overcome the tributary stream, land on the majestic main stream, and succeed in riding the wonderful flow. And it is predicted that this trend will arrive in the not too distant future.
Representative media of analog culture are the gramophone, film, and typewriter. This is the diagnosis of German media philosopher Friedrich Kittler. According to Kittler, these three media are the media that shattered the Romantic worldview. There are three representative cultures that make up the romantic worldview. These include hand-written musical scores, hand-drawn pictures, and transcribed literature. First, let's think about sound. We cannot hear all sounds. Choose something and listen to it. You can't hear the cicadas outside your house and the radio inside your house at the same time. The sounds we hear are selected sounds. Romantic scores also record only selective sounds. But the gramophone recorded all the sounds at the same time and played them to us. Thanks to this medium, we have learned about the nature of sound and the true nature of our mechanisms for responding to sound. Kittler accepted Lacan's theory and diagnosed the world created by the gramophone as the real world.
Painting, which was praised as a sublime object during the Romantic era, also experienced changes. Painting was an art form that told a story by creating a three-dimensional illusion on a flat surface. The history of painting was about expanding aesthetic consciousness to the level of the sublime by taking impossible risks in the limiting situation of a flat surface, developing more plausible illusionary forms and brushing techniques, and sophisticating them. However, the value of paintings collapsed as movies developed. This is because a movie that moves continuously with 24 frames per second was able to contain a richer story and enabled more imagination. (The aspect of the invention of the camera that caused the collapse of painting was smaller than expected.) Kittler called the world created by film an imaginary world.
The best medium of the Romantic era was literature. It was literature that could express all of the joys and sorrows of human emotions, human purpose, the narrative of human history, events, and descriptions of objects. The story he used to listen to while sitting on his mother's lap as a child and fall asleep while listening to it is now embodied in the boy. Even as the boy grows up, he accepts literature by listening to his mother's voice. Literature is the mother's voice. We all read Greek classics and German Romanticism in our mothers' voices. This is why literature is noble. Even when I read French naturalistic literature, I still read it in my mother's voice. By reading the text out loud under the guidance of your mother, you become completely immersed in the story. At this time, the reader feels a resonance and learns about the world. Of course, the same applies when reading bildungsroman (bildungsroman) such as Hermann Hesse or Thomas Mann, or social accusation literature such as Günter Grass. These authors' handwritten manuscripts have a huge aura. Handwritten literature is different from literature created by typewriters. A typewriter handles letters by organizing typesetting into uniform lines. Therefore, the author's perfect aura can no longer be captured. It is difficult to treat the overall picture of the world as pathos with letters assembled by typewriter. Due to the nature of the medium, typewriter writing is segmented, analytical, and prone to being buried in dry stories. The reason why 20th century literature had no choice but to stop at segmented and analytical descriptions or go in an experimental direction is related to the characteristics of the medium. Nevertheless, there was hope that the analog world, which was born in the 19th century and reached its peak in the 20th century, could usher in a better today than yesterday through technological advancement. Even if mechanical and instrumental reason left the myth of romanticism aground, the master of reason was still humans themselves. However, with the advent of digital civilization created by supercomputers, we began to predict the end point of human civilization. We are slowly witnessing the moment when digital civilization will reach its peak. And I feel anxious. This is because the emergence of artificial intelligence, or robots that surpass humans, may threaten humans who enjoy absolute sovereignty within the world. Of course, there is currently a sharp conflict between the progressive view that robots can solve all human problems and the pessimistic view that robots subordinate humans to robots. However, more weight is given to the opinion that the former perspective will lead the future.
We must talk about art from now on. What has been described so far is merely a supplementary means of explaining the work of artist Park In-seong. In the days when instrumental reason ruled everything, that is, in the analog days, painting did not compete with photography and film, but developed a completely different narrative. Painting from Classical Greece to the Romantic period, or even more narrowly from the Renaissance to the Romantic period, explored what the mirrored picture was like. Beginning with Impressionism in the 19th century, people began to think philosophically about what the mirror itself was. In other words, I began to explore the essence of the medium called painting. The horizons were expanded by turning the method of representation that had been handed over to photography or film into reflection on the medium. The essence of painting lies in the fact that it is flat. The painting is flat. Therefore, the history of the process from figuration to hemisphere, from hemisphere to abstraction, and from abstraction to the brushstroke itself was produced. This is what 20th century art looks like. However, the art of photography cannot go beyond the limitations of the developer program that developed the camera mechanism. Even if there is a work that makes photography look like abstract art, it is a reference to modern painting and is not an inevitable result of the history of photography.
Artist Park In-seong creates a primary formative world by cutting and pasting the camera film itself. This film is a product of the analog era. The shape of this combined film is reminiscent of a modern painting. Even though painting has moved to the modern time axis, it still has romantic elements. That is originality. Alternatively, it can be expressed as an autographic property. The primary result of artist Park In-seong's segmentation and disassembly of photographic film and reassembly and composition can be said to be the reconstruction of a romantic worldview through photography. However, this is filmed again and printed on a digital screen. At this time, the primary medium of an autobiographical nature is transformed into an allographic property. The artist projected the value of originality in painting, which was maintained from Romanticism to Modernism, onto the photographic medium and then brought it into the world of infinite replicability in the digital age. However, artist Park In-seong’s progressiveness is established at a deeper level. He has already said that the history of painting was a transitional process from the image reflected in the mirror (reproduction) to the mirror itself (essentialism of the medium). While tracing the historical process of painting, the author may have thought that the medium of photography also has something like historical narrative or essentialism. So, of course, you would have been curious about how the future of photography will progress. Photographs are governed by the program attached to the camera, regardless of the intellect, imagination, and sensitivity of the person taking the photograph. There is no choice but to be buried in the limitations of the program inherent in the camera. Even if there are photos that look abstract because their shapes are severely distorted, or photos that look semi-abstract because the boundaries of objects are erased, they are all transformed in the realm of representation. Fundamentally, all photographs are bound to the category of representation. Artist Park In-seong projects the grand conceptual adventures of modernist painters into the medium of photography. It is about thinking about the medium of photography itself. In order to overcome the limitations of representation, it was necessary to examine the essence of the photographic medium. Photography involves confining the subtle dispersion of the light source that enters the lens into film treated with a photosensitive material. Therefore, the basis of photography lies in the film itself. It is very significant that the author did not focus on the images formed on the film, but took issue with the film itself. Moreover, the circular frame created through the process of scanning, cutting, pasting, and combining film is in line with the formalism of modernism. That's by design. A very progressive way of thinking is that the content is great, but the form is overlooked. It is easy to focus on the thinking itself and miss out on the aesthetic category. Author Park In-seong applied rigorously refined formalism to transformative thinking, which can be said to be an outstanding idea.
Furthermore, there is a deeper meaning behind Park In-seong's understanding of the essence of photography as film itself. There are countless worldviews about media, but they are largely divided into two perspectives. One is the view that Marshall McLuhan defined as “an extension of human senses.” If this view is correct, a lever is an extension of the human hand, and a telescope or microscope is an extension of the human eye. It is said that humans have continuously evolved and developed media through their own reason in order to expand their sense of self. Another conflicting view is that of Friedrich Kittler. Kittler throws at us an infamous proposition: He said, “The media determines our situation.” According to Kittler, media are not created by human efforts or will, but develop on their own in accordance with social and historical conditions. And thanks to the media, humans have redefined their worldview for the better. That is what ‘technological determinism’ means. For example, it was not until the gramophone appeared that it became possible to truly think about sound. Modern writing became possible only with the advent of the typewriter. It was not until the advent of the camera that it became possible to think about the nature of visual culture. I think writer Park In-seong is closer to Kittler's descendant. As the author also studied the medium of photography, he was able to grasp the huge flow of visual culture created by humans thanks to that medium.
So what exactly is the complete scene that writer Park In-seong is pursuing? While still maintaining the mythology (originality) of the Romantic era and the rigor (formalism) of modernism, at the same time, a spirit of adventure is emerging to widen the entrance to the future even a little. In the end, the author shows us the confidence to willingly submit oneself to the fear brought about by the flood of books created by the digital age. To put it simply, the discourse of struggle and reconciliation that has never been simpler in Western cultural history is condensed in a series of screens shown by artist Park In-seong. As per the artist's detailed intention, the conflicting elements of romanticism, modernism, analog, and digital maintain a state of tension and support each other in the work. The complete scene pursued by the artist refers to visual thinking that allows the past, present, and future of visual culture to be reflected and predicted at the same time. The artist's visual thinking has now opened its doors. So, I sincerely hope that the author will soon overcome the tributary stream, land on the majestic main stream, and succeed in riding the wonderful flow. And it is predicted that this trend will arrive in the not too distant future.