How to inhabit Cyber Culture?
(Kim Sung Won / Critic)
It is indeed digital ‘revolution’, how rapid and immense changes the Internet communication network has brought into our lives—our way of thinking and our life styles. So-called, N-generation has witnessed the explosive growth of the IT industry in the 90’s. There is nothing exaggerated about to say that their behavior patterns and thought process are based on what is called, the connecting mode. Individuals are closely connected to mobile phones; such attachment highlights the meaning of network in this network society. Near-infinite space of the broadband does exist in real. As virtual reality and reality are merged, rather stable and rigid thought system from the earlier times has converted to the more fluid and flexible.
According to Collective Intelligence by Pierre Levy, “Emerging techno-culture environment in the cyberspace can be a basis of new art form, of which boundaries are fairly obscure between transmission and reception, also between composition and interpretation.” Rho Jae-oon’s works represent all the probable particularities and impressions from the cyberspace culture. Regardless it is an online or offline space where his works are displayed, his work becomes a tool or a situation that can switch the thought system to the connecting mode. Rho Jae-oon is a cyber user: he surfs around the cyber space, and downloads whatever information he requires; the collected information is customized, reconstructed, also reinterpreted. ‘User’ herein is a producer and a consumer, also a transmitter and a receiver. In this sense, viewers should enter ‘the space’, in which the artist represents; each of us, viewers must become a user, as another producer and consumer.
Igniting Virus
‘Skins of South Korea’ consists of ‘Super Interface’, ‘South Korea-3 Parts’, ‘Moving Worm’, ‘Osama Project’. Rho Jae-oon spreaded the ‘Osama Worm’ virus that he had extracted from the Internet in the offline space. This virus can be infected before anyone notices. Once contaminated, there is no vaccine; there are no other cures but taking it as a pleasure, which makes the virus quite terrifying. Then the question is: how should that small silver color-ball thing placed at the exhibition hall be appreciated, or be interpreted? Should it be according to its name, or its exterior? Neither seems to be right. It is not necessary to give serious meanings to the name, Osama Worm, and all the corresponding issues in the politics and religions. Because Rho Jae-oon has not done this to accuse Osama Bin Laden, the name could be considered a nickname. The first offline role of ‘Osama Worm’ is to shift our system to connecting mode; we immediately become users. Once the reality and imagination are combined, prejudgment, ideology, rules and regulations etc can be disappeared. We can now enter the world of immeasurable sources and of infinite possibilities, where we can freely rearrange another reality. Apart from the gravity of subjects and the issues, they simply coexist.
In the Moving Worm Project, the reality is fictionalized as soon as Osama Worm shows up in the restoration work-site of Oryu-dong. When the gloomy reality without dreams is fictionalized and as new narratives are made, Rho Jae-oon’s virus goes on in flames. There is a space only Rho Jae-oon can create. Osama Worm does not wish to condemn abandoned factories and containers or reconstruction work-sites. It is to picture our imaginations. Images in the Moving Worm Project are making a space, in which illusory narratives can possibly dwell. This space is visualized only through that ‘action’ breeding fictional narratives. Thus, it is not found in the photographed images. It is the imagination that can fine and animate the other side of reality, and it is the transition of our thought system.
Image- Skin / Image-Blog
Although it is said that areas and concepts of art have been broadened, representation is still the major part. Of course, knowing the history of ‘representation’, artists would not want to replicate its superseded meanings. However, representation implies the production of images in art. Image can be material or immaterial; Rho Jae-oon’s image is sort of ‘interface’ that can envision and encourage imperceptible images. ‘Super-interface’ from Skins of South Korea is a group of images that can reconstruct and promotes South Korea as a subject matter.
Such images can be “memories, figures, symbols and scenes that are either directly or indirectly to do with South Korea.” We create exclusive stories. As we take or dispose well-finished and plain ‘image-skins.’ Various layers like reality hidden behind the imaginary reality and its counterpart, or the genuine and the fake co-reside there.
Blog-like existence is noticed from the images found on Vimalaki.net, Dr No Comix, c12pictures.com, and many more. Images from ‘Factories and Containers’ or ‘Moving Worm’ are not refined; they are rather unfinished images arranged in a row according to the time. What they aim to show is ‘now here’. Though intentionally all-encompassing, it is amicable. Image-Blog is like a personal journal, through which we share and get connected to the life and ideas of the artist.
Rho Jae-oon’s works were shown on Vimalaki.net from 2000 to 2004; each of his works seemed disconnected in its meaning and it did not seem coherent in choosing subject matters. As if scribbled whatever came up in his mind, had there been neither orders nor logical structures. Through the blogger’s way of existence, images are connected to private as well as public areas. Anonymous bloggers fill the blanks and gaps among the pieces floating in the reality and in the virtual reality; they enable them to be rebuilt. Of course, how one rearrange the collected can make much differences; such a reorganizing process can be only experienced by active users. Practicing the reconstruction is like doing a puzzle game, reading a mystery novel, or even like sailing in the middle of ocean.
(2004)
(Kim Sung Won / Critic)
It is indeed digital ‘revolution’, how rapid and immense changes the Internet communication network has brought into our lives—our way of thinking and our life styles. So-called, N-generation has witnessed the explosive growth of the IT industry in the 90’s. There is nothing exaggerated about to say that their behavior patterns and thought process are based on what is called, the connecting mode. Individuals are closely connected to mobile phones; such attachment highlights the meaning of network in this network society. Near-infinite space of the broadband does exist in real. As virtual reality and reality are merged, rather stable and rigid thought system from the earlier times has converted to the more fluid and flexible.
According to Collective Intelligence by Pierre Levy, “Emerging techno-culture environment in the cyberspace can be a basis of new art form, of which boundaries are fairly obscure between transmission and reception, also between composition and interpretation.” Rho Jae-oon’s works represent all the probable particularities and impressions from the cyberspace culture. Regardless it is an online or offline space where his works are displayed, his work becomes a tool or a situation that can switch the thought system to the connecting mode. Rho Jae-oon is a cyber user: he surfs around the cyber space, and downloads whatever information he requires; the collected information is customized, reconstructed, also reinterpreted. ‘User’ herein is a producer and a consumer, also a transmitter and a receiver. In this sense, viewers should enter ‘the space’, in which the artist represents; each of us, viewers must become a user, as another producer and consumer.
Igniting Virus
‘Skins of South Korea’ consists of ‘Super Interface’, ‘South Korea-3 Parts’, ‘Moving Worm’, ‘Osama Project’. Rho Jae-oon spreaded the ‘Osama Worm’ virus that he had extracted from the Internet in the offline space. This virus can be infected before anyone notices. Once contaminated, there is no vaccine; there are no other cures but taking it as a pleasure, which makes the virus quite terrifying. Then the question is: how should that small silver color-ball thing placed at the exhibition hall be appreciated, or be interpreted? Should it be according to its name, or its exterior? Neither seems to be right. It is not necessary to give serious meanings to the name, Osama Worm, and all the corresponding issues in the politics and religions. Because Rho Jae-oon has not done this to accuse Osama Bin Laden, the name could be considered a nickname. The first offline role of ‘Osama Worm’ is to shift our system to connecting mode; we immediately become users. Once the reality and imagination are combined, prejudgment, ideology, rules and regulations etc can be disappeared. We can now enter the world of immeasurable sources and of infinite possibilities, where we can freely rearrange another reality. Apart from the gravity of subjects and the issues, they simply coexist.
In the Moving Worm Project, the reality is fictionalized as soon as Osama Worm shows up in the restoration work-site of Oryu-dong. When the gloomy reality without dreams is fictionalized and as new narratives are made, Rho Jae-oon’s virus goes on in flames. There is a space only Rho Jae-oon can create. Osama Worm does not wish to condemn abandoned factories and containers or reconstruction work-sites. It is to picture our imaginations. Images in the Moving Worm Project are making a space, in which illusory narratives can possibly dwell. This space is visualized only through that ‘action’ breeding fictional narratives. Thus, it is not found in the photographed images. It is the imagination that can fine and animate the other side of reality, and it is the transition of our thought system.
Image- Skin / Image-Blog
Although it is said that areas and concepts of art have been broadened, representation is still the major part. Of course, knowing the history of ‘representation’, artists would not want to replicate its superseded meanings. However, representation implies the production of images in art. Image can be material or immaterial; Rho Jae-oon’s image is sort of ‘interface’ that can envision and encourage imperceptible images. ‘Super-interface’ from Skins of South Korea is a group of images that can reconstruct and promotes South Korea as a subject matter.
Such images can be “memories, figures, symbols and scenes that are either directly or indirectly to do with South Korea.” We create exclusive stories. As we take or dispose well-finished and plain ‘image-skins.’ Various layers like reality hidden behind the imaginary reality and its counterpart, or the genuine and the fake co-reside there.
Blog-like existence is noticed from the images found on Vimalaki.net, Dr No Comix, c12pictures.com, and many more. Images from ‘Factories and Containers’ or ‘Moving Worm’ are not refined; they are rather unfinished images arranged in a row according to the time. What they aim to show is ‘now here’. Though intentionally all-encompassing, it is amicable. Image-Blog is like a personal journal, through which we share and get connected to the life and ideas of the artist.
Rho Jae-oon’s works were shown on Vimalaki.net from 2000 to 2004; each of his works seemed disconnected in its meaning and it did not seem coherent in choosing subject matters. As if scribbled whatever came up in his mind, had there been neither orders nor logical structures. Through the blogger’s way of existence, images are connected to private as well as public areas. Anonymous bloggers fill the blanks and gaps among the pieces floating in the reality and in the virtual reality; they enable them to be rebuilt. Of course, how one rearrange the collected can make much differences; such a reorganizing process can be only experienced by active users. Practicing the reconstruction is like doing a puzzle game, reading a mystery novel, or even like sailing in the middle of ocean.
(2004)