Time Poem

The Bangucheon Petroglyphs are among humanity’s most ancient records and a stratum of time in which layer upon layer of life and memories are built up. Transcending simple pictures, forms including whales, deer, boats, and hunting tools attest to the relationship people have been forming with nature and to aspirations of communities. These petroglyphs, in which the time of millennia are inscribed, still lead us to think about the past, present, and future today.

This exhibition brings out the multilayered temporality the Bangucheon Petroglyphs hold with a contemporary technological language including artificial intelligence, a robot, and a hologram. A sculpture is placed outside the XR lab and gives form to the realationship between nature and artifice, while a robot arm projects a hologram at the center of the room, dreamily shaking the boundary between the virtual and reality. Different times come into contact in a single space on the XR Lab’s wall surface as new images artificial intelligence generated intersect with the actual petroglyphs’ records.

Viewers will find themselves in a flow in which reality and the virtual, memories and dreams, and the past and present intersect as they walk in this space. Each viewer’s conscious becomes a central axis connecting those times, allowing them to become aware of what kind of temporal grain they are living in. This experience transcends simple audiovisual senses to lead one to think about the intersection points between time and memory and between values and technology.

The Bangucheon Petroglyphs still become a miraculous stage even in today’s digital civilization. This place asks us, “What are the values humanity should pursue in this age and the coming future?”  

*Je Baak

Je Baak is an artist who has been exploring sensibilities, perception, and human self-direction based on Eastern philosophy and modern science. He interprets advanced technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), robotics, and brain wave recognition, through the language of art while moving between various media including new media, installation art, and sculpture. He asks questions about technology-led future society and experiments with new communication methods including public art and performances.

He graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in visual design and earned a master's degree at the Royal College of Art in London. He has exhibited in LUX in London (2021), Seoul Light DDP (2021), Seoul Media city Biennale (2016), and Ars Electronica (2017–2019). He won the Grand Prize at the 2010 Joongang Fine Arts Grand Exhibition and the 2016 VH Awards Grand Prix and is currently a professor of sculpture at the Seoul National University College of Fine Arts.