[ISEA2019] Artist Statement: Hyun Ju Kim – Robot Symbiosis: ANT 2019

Artist Statement

Robotic art installation with motors, plaster, robots with IC, sensors, video projection, dimensions variable

The installation explores the symbiotic relationship between the human body and the non-human mechanism in contemporary techno-society. Mobile robots, sculptures with projected body images and immersive sounds construct a new body form, the dynamic hybrid of the organic and the inorganic throughout the gallery. Viewers are invited to be a part of this synthesized body form by walking through sculptures and interacting with robots with different personality and behavior while controlling the audiovisuals.
The Robot Symbiosis series starts with thinking about the state of the human body that is expanded and dispersed by media and technology. The work consists of 6-8 pieces of plaster sculpture on which the images of the body are projected and the robots roam between them. The audience contemplates the image of the body that is expanded and dispersed or moves among the robots and the imagery of the body to finally complete the image of the technically sympathetic body.
The work shows that the human body and the machines are interconnected to form an actor-network. A human body projected on to plaster forms gets the quality of thingness, while robots become more active agents. The artist intended to give viewers a moment to think over the issue of thinness and the non-human in relation to human and body in the time of non-human turn.

  • Hyun Ju Kim (ex-media) lives and works in Seoul, South Korea, exhibiting various digital experimental films, interactive installation and robotic art nationally and internationally. Her computer interactive installations and performance projects deal with posthuman conditions in the techno-cultural society, exploring the notion of identities in such an environment with ubiquitous digital technologies. In her recent works, she has been creating artistic vocabularies to deal with the issue of the body in the techno-society and the ontological and epistemological relations of human, machine, algorithm and things in the time of ‘non-human turn. Previously worked as assistant professor of art at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Kim is currently associate professor in convergent media at Seoul Media Institute of Technology (SMIT) and the director of Expanded Media Studio, a visual & media arts research group at SMIT. Graduated from POSTECH, Kim studied computer art at the department of Transmedia in the Syracuse University, USA.  ex-media.org