Interview with Curator Jung In Jung
Human relationship with digital technology is a preoccupation for audiovisual artist, Jung In Jung. Originally from Busan, South Korea, Jung is now pursuing a PhD in Music Technology at the University of Huddersfield. Her compositions and installations reveal an artist concerned with how our interdependence with digital devices is changing our definitions and expectations of what is functioning and malfunctioning technology.
She has presented her work in festivals and exhibitions around the world including the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, NEoN Digital Arts Festival, Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts, and Istanbul Design Biennale. A Flux Factory 2014 resident, Jung returns to the space where she started experimenting with sound, gesture, and dance to curate Artificial Retirement.
I joined as co-curator shortly after I started my Flux residency. When I first heard the term ‘Artificial Retirement’, visions of glitched images danced in my head. But Jung’s vision for the exhibition was always more critical. She was eager to find artists using digital processes to investigate, critique, question our over-burdened expectations of technology. I interviewed Jung about her inspiration and motivations behind the exhibition.
What inspired the concept for the exhibition Artificial Retirement?
This digital era distinguishes the ideas of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in the same way the digital world works in the binary system. The boundary between those two ideas, success and failure, was more arbitrary in the analogue world because there was no computer system telling me there is an error or a failed process immediately after I finish a job. That decision is not always mine, and I feel less connected to these smart machines as a human.
It might sound a bit cheesy, but perhaps we connect to machines when they are not perfect. When they start malfunctioning — although I know they are simply not working correctly — I enjoy looking at the uncanny moments because it looks like they are acting autonomously. It is true that we are very much technologically-aided, and it is very difficult to live without technology. But still, I can see rejections when machines try to replace humans. Innovative technologies are always sold to make our lives better, but we always confront new problems because of our new inventions.
So, I was curious about how young artists live in this time…the goal is not to present failed works, but to show the presence of imperfect moments captured by the artists in Artificial Retirement.
What does ‘Artificial Retirement’ mean?
‘Artificial Retirement’ doesn’t mean that all artificial things will eventually vanish. We constantly change, eliminate, and upgrade our machines. The word ‘retirement’ is to point out the nostalgia towards the old digital gadgets, saying “it used to be great,” rather than pointing out the world before digital devices existed. We miss older generations of digital devices or interfaces sometimes, and there are huge debates on such issues…We connect ourselves to disappearing technology as well. They retire as Replicants “retire” in the film Blade Runner!
Do the ideas of Failure, Imperfection, or Destruction apply to your own work as an artist?
Yes, they do in way. I’ve been collaborating with contemporary dancers to create interactive performances, and now I’m pursuing my PhD program in music and music technology at the University of Huddersfield. For my research, I decided not to look for advanced technology to track dancers’ motion. Instead, I use existing technologies, and try to find reasons for using the specific technology to create interactive works. I had found that whichever technology I used, I still had to spend some time correctly calibrating and mapping interactions. So one day I was like, ‘Why not to use limited devices?’
I use the old vintage game controller, Gametrak, and this technology limits and interferes dancers’ kinespheres rather than letting them to dance freer. This condition makes the dancers think how they move with the technology, and it really affects their movement creation process. Eventually what happens is that dancers connect themselves with this ‘limited’ environment and naturally create narratives from it. I observe all these interactions and create audiovisual works according to the narratives generated from the experiment. I showed the dance piece, Thermospheric Station (2014) while I was a Flux resident in 2014, and that was the beginning of this experiment. More recent pieces are Locus (2015) and Pen-Y-Pass (2016).
“It might sound a bit cheesy, but perhaps we connect to machines when they are not perfect. When they start malfunctioning — although I know they are simply not working correctly — I enjoy looking at the uncanny moments because it looks like they are acting autonomously” — Jung In Jung
Why hold this exhibition at Flux Factory?
I proposed this exhibition to Flux because Flux values each artist as they are rather than pushing them to ‘produce’ more with specific missions. I think Flux stands out from other institutions in this busy New York City because the flow here is different. Now the word ‘lab’ is used over and over in all other art and technology based institutions, but Flux always has been a laboratory for artists to grow and learn from each other. Therefore, I thought this is a good place to show imperfect moments as a part of a process towards something.
Artificial Retirement opens August 19th at Flux Factory with an opening reception at 6pm. Performances by Byron Rich and Heather Brand, Niki Passath, and Fan Letters start at 7pm. AR is a Flux Factory major exhibition.
