Gray Box Area: Space as an Event

“An experience of active exploration to find one’s unique perspective acquired by stepping into an unfamiliar world”

Media art is both an artistic and cultural activity that allows us to recognize the powerful influence of technology in a wide range of areas, from our daily lives, to society, and even to culture. Recently, through three-dimensional screening installations such as projection mapping and media façades, media art has been accelerating its development and expanding its appeal based on the legitimacy and familiarity of overlapping worlds that emerged in the post-COVID-19 era. The overlap concerns the realization of the relationship between them and the inevitability of the coexistence of digital and analog, virtual and physical (real), and online and offline spaces. This special exhibition draws attention to spatial screening to present one of the media art landscapes that are witnessed in Korea today.

Gray Box Area is a spatial screening exhibition. Nowadays, screen-based video experience transcends the conventional 2D, rectangular frame and guides us to a special world beyond the screen as it encompasses a variety of forms, places, and depths. Screens are no longer flat; they are now three-dimensional and serve as installations and spaces. They now occupy various internal and external surfaces in exhibition spaces and urban areas as media that deliver new experiences, arouse new thinking, and create new interactions.

“Gray Box,” a term that appears in the title of the exhibition, is a form of software testing, where software is assessed by a tester with limited knowledge of the internal operation of the system. This exhibition offers a spatial screen experience in this “gray box” area. Thanks to the media-based experience acquired through the use of various devices such as smartphones, we have technological understanding and literacy above a certain level in the conscious/subconscious realms. Based on a partial understanding of technology, like gray box testers, visitors explore details like internal structures and logic through what is presented on the surface of the exhibited works. Through such exploration, visitors continue to discover mysteries or unique elements of the works. Such are moments and processes of investigating, interpreting, and walking through the space where the events of the works take place.

To realize this experience, the exhibition has been designed with a combination of projector-based and LED-based immersive spaces. The architectural video installation that occupies the entire exhibition space offers visitors an experience of time-space transformation and development that begins from the contact with the work’s surface at the moment one enters the space. As dynamic transformations of the work and visitors’ explorative participation connects, the artwork’s development and evolution into “a space as an event” will become visible.

Over the years, media art has gained many layers based on related technology. In this exhibition, we explore media art in the form of screens among those layers. The exhibition will serve as an opportunity to see content and artwork, engineering and art, and scenes created by different generations that collide, resonate with, and are in exchange with one another within the boundary of media art in today’s society.

Participating Artists

Kohui, Mooni Perry, Joon Moon, STUDIO AR+ECH, Ki Woun Shin, Ye Seung Lee, Leenam Lee, Seung Hyo Jang, Sung Rok Choi, KMA (Korea Media Art Association) (Chang Kyum Kim, Kyung Ho Lee, Don Ah Lee, Hyun Jung Lee, Se Min Cho, Seung Ku Han)

Introduction of the Curators

Lee Jaehyung

Lee Jaehyung is a media artist working with various media-based technology such as LED, AI and GPS to create his works and produce public art projects. Most notable works from his portfolio are Under the Hope, a media installation of LED display videos on the three-dimensional surface of a whale sculpture at the Jeju International Airport, and Face of City_Seoul, a project from 2020 showcased at DDP Seoulight that reflected the state and sentiment of Seoul through facial expressions produced using real-time data collected from social media. Lee is currently the CEO of FLOWORKS, a media art content production and curation company, and he also holds titles as a Director and the Administrative Chief at Korea Media Art Association.

Daechan Heo

With an academic background in Art and Design, Daechan Heo curates and conducts research on arts and culture, including technology and media-based art and design. He is interested in today’s environment created by technology and media as well as various phenomena and human activity within it. Heo is the Editor-in-Chief of AliceOn, an online channel for media art and culture, Head of the game research group The Play, and editor of the journal published by the Design History Society of Korea. Heo presents media art and design exhibitions based on his research related to technology and culture, along with related educational programs and projects.

Screening Schedule