■ Data Distorted(Series #3) Introduction
 

Artificial Nature/Haru Ji+Graham Wakefield (Artist)×Chan-Byoung Chae (Scientist)

Entanglement
2023, Multi-channel video, color, 5.1-channel sound, 12´21˝

How much work does the universe do and how many dreams does it have to nurture a single tree?
Then, how much of the universe does a forest encompass?
 

Entanglement invites viewers into a multi-sensory, multi-dimensional immersive environment where visible and invisible worlds, inspired by the motif of a forest, intertwine.  Following the attention mechanisms of Professor Chan-Byoung Chae’s research team, this work applies generative AI visualization to a dynamic complex system based on procedural modeling of a growing forest and the dynamic connectivity and communication through subterranean mycelium and bacterial network systems.
 

Entanglement was created as a site-specific non-real-time feedback system for the XR Lab at the Ulsan Art Museum, for an artistic experience that accesses the complexity of nature while deliberately allowing for errors and data omissions in the creative process to maintain the overall balance of the complex ecosystem. This project utilizes computational media technologies to showcase the microcosmic entanglements in the formation of relationships in nature, offering a sensory opportunity to contemplate on our connections with the world beyond


■ About
 

Through the XR Lab, the Ulsan Art Museum has contemplated the role of a laboratory in which researchers of novel technologies share knowledge and insights and engage in creative art experiments. In the present day, diverse engineering technologies, including AI, are expanding into the domain of artistic creation, and the museum is therefore considering the possibility of a new, interdisciplinary genre of art that does not simply utilize engineering technologies as methods of art creation.

For its first project, the Ulsan Art Museum is collaborating with Digital Silence to hold Data Distorted. Digital Silence comprises new media artists, Yonsei University scientists, and art theorists. A collaborative project between art and science experts, the group has held seminars since 2020. The Ulsan Art Museum XR Lab x Digital Silence collaborative exhibition comprises expanded lumino kinetics/animated installations/immersive feedback system that utilize lensless cameras/reverse neural network algorithm/attention mechanisms. The XR Lab will showcase the series of installation the above one by one.
 

Data Distorted represents the engineering potential of Digital Silence, where dropping, mutations, and errors that occur in the process of manipulating algorithms can lead to unexpected but optimal results. This suggests that such results happening in the distorted digital side are more convergent (like a Mobius strip), than binary divisions such as positive vs. negative functions and perfection vs. imperfection.

From March to August, Data Distorted features the collaborative work between new media artists and scientists in sequence, from Bae, Jaehyuck (teamVOID) and Lee, Seung Ah, Han, Yoon Chung and Kim, Seong-Lyun, to Artificial Nature (Haru Ji+Graham Wakefield) and Chan-Byoung Chae.