SASG Residency Week 2
This week, I would like to introduce an artist duo Liza and Julia from Germany researching Korean sweets during their residency at SASG. One of the famous Korean sweets is tteok (떡), a Korean rice cake. Tteok-bokki, a spicy variation, is well-known but the sweet kinds are also popular and can be found at markets. We stopped by at a tteok shop at a market near Ahyeon station and the ones we tried were cooked with pumpkin. It was not artificially sweetened so that we could taste the sweetness of the pumpkin. Another famous Korean dessert is shaved ice. We had two kinds of shaved ice that have ice cream inside. It seemed that the ice was frozen tea unlike traditional shaved ice that is prepared with plain shaved ice topped with syrup. The matcha shaved ice with red bean paste was similar to Japanese Uji-kintoki but the Japanese one tend to be fluffier.
At SASG, I continued experimenting with freeliner video mapping. I mapped on the iconic robot with a metal frame outside the building; then one of the followers on Instagram told me that Kimchi and Chips used to have a studio in this building. I did not know about the history of this art center enough, but I heard that Kimchi and Chips are still part of the community as advisors of Da Vinci Creative festival.
I visited Art Center Nabi, another art center in Seoul specialized in media art. Currently the gallery features a VR piece “Depth of Circle” by ROOMTONE and a few projects from Nabi Lab, including Gene Kogan’s style transfer. Although the VR piece was a passive, narrative experience, the user can hold and move around a physical ball tracked by a Vive controller, which appears in the virtual space as a metaphor of a planet and a cell. Also, in addition to audiovisual, they use a wearable haptic backpack (Subpac) to augment the sound experience. Though it is not explicitly written at the gallery space, you can either reserve a slot or walk in and knock at the office door like I did when the space is not busy. Since the gallery is not so big, I highly recommend to try the installation. After the experience, Suhun, a curator of Nabi, kindly explained the programs of the center to me and even gave me catalogs of the past exhibitions. Nabi has a few other locations including Nabi Lab and a residence for artists. The next artists in residence are focused on blockchain and there will be lectures and workshops about the topic. I am planning a visit to Nabi Lab later this month to have exchange with the artists.
I started preparing material for workshops that I will organize with my collaborator, Evelyne Drouin, as part of research creation in August. We are planning hands-on workshops that covers robotics and sound, generative choreography, and brain-computer interface, which leads to our piece for the open studio and exhibition in September.
Besides the SASG residency, I am starting a one-month “web” residency with Janine Harrington at Favoriten Festival on July 16th. We met at danceWeb scholarship programme back in 2016 and since then It is an ongoing research project and we will post the process and dialogue of texts, movements and animations on Instagram account @call.stack.
