Tristan Lim and Hye Joo Jun at Comma Space
By Seungah Lee

Over the years, we have republished parts of long-form writing, from catalogue essays to book chapters. This practice is now formalised as part of our ‘Excerpts’ series. To read other writings from the series, click here.

Hye Joo Jun, ‘Body Check’, 2020, mixed media installation with two-channel sound (long range acoustic device, laser, motor) 9′18″, and one-channel video, 5′42″. Exhibition view at Comma Space. Image courtesy of the artist and Comma Space.

Digital technology, which is rapidly changing today, has influenced humans, society, art, environment and ecosystems in various forms. Based on the ambivalence created by the expectation that technology experiments will change the future and the fear of the radical development of technology, the faster the technology develops, the more discourses and questions are constantly produced. Such symptoms have a similar effect on artists. There are also concerns that many artists who explore technology and art through recent various technology-based convergence art exhibitions and works are constantly taking on challenges without knowing where the end of this technological experiment is.

Above all, human activities evolving based on technology, invisible issues behind them, and a series of processes leading to the virtual world through the development of information and networks are increasingly influencing the future of art ecology. Whether we want it or not, we are becoming increasingly familiar with such an art ecology and the environment created by digital technology.

Through direct and indirect experiments on the body, the exhibition ‘Body Experiment: Reflection of Technology’ reveals the point of concern of the two participating artists, Hye Joo Jun and Tristan Lim, about the impact of technology on the present society. In the past, the body was explored in various ways and forms within the discourse of art, and the body is still a crucial topic related to various activities and experiences within the realm of art. Through the development of technology, human senses have expanded, and as the engine of virtual reality has accelerated, the body can leap beyond the constraints of physical space and enter another dimension. In other words, our human body has become more sensitive and complex than before, but at the same time, it exists as a weightless avatar floating in virtual space.

Re-examining moments that people are unaware of and phenomena occurring in urban spaces that pass by insensibly, Hye Joo Jun explores and visualises invisible signals that constantly affect people. Jun’s work ‘Body Check’ is a kinetic installation that audibly implements the mechanism by which modern technology is operating for monitoring and control. Using ultrasonic-oriented speakers, the artist reproduces the straightness and violence of modern signals that penetrate the individual's body with sound, and further reveals numerous invisible surveillance and control problems behind protection, which is becoming more advanced with technological development. In addition, a drone, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), appearing on a small monitor at a corner space metaphorically expresses the end of an invisible destruction system outside individual influence as an extension of surveillance, and makes us imagine a phase in the future of technology.

Tristan Lim, 'Hallucigenia (2)', 2021, 3D print and foam composite with single-channel video, 02:00 mins video loop with two-channel sound. Exhibition view at Comma Space. Image courtesy of the artist and Comma Space.

Tristan Lim, ‘Hallucigenia (1)’ (video still), 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.

Tristan Lim has been investigating questions about the attitude of recognising and looking at the boundary between the virtual environment — increasingly familiar to us today — and reality. Through his work ‘Hallucigenia’, he metaphorically tells the story of entrapment the body can fall into. In his video work, based on exaggerated fear, nightmares and the personal experience of sleep paralysis, ancient fossils metaphorise the body oddly in new shapes. He perceives the formation of fossils and its moment of hardening petrification that form the basis of the work as a point where the body and bodily consciousness are separated. And he compares the situations in which scientists infer the shape and timing of fossils from millions of years later with the compression, distortion, transformation and recombination images we constantly produce using digital tools today. The body on the screen created in this way is ultimately our future image, automatically adapting to this digital ecology.

“By showing the various influences of technological development on the environment we live in, the two artists in the exhibition reveal how technology has changed the human ecological environment and how we are to accept it in the future. ”

The exposure of arbitrary technologies in numerous digital ecological environments that we are experiencing today and the various ways of accepting them are rapidly developing at a different pace from the past. In a world dominated by technology, like human body experiments conducted by the ruling class during the past war, we may be living as a new subjugated class and an object of human body experiments. By showing the various influences of technological development on the environment we live in, the two artists in the exhibition reveal how technology has changed the human ecological environment and how we are to accept it in the future. A series of processes taking place between the body and technology areas of the new digital media era reflects the relationship between the current state of our society and technology, while also proposing a new discourse. It is worth thinking together about various questions presented in this exhibition ‘Body Experiment: Reflection of Technology’ and carry them out through physical experience.

The exhibition is the second presentation in Comma’s ‘INBETWEEN’ series. Through investigating these intersectional ideas, ‘INBETWEEN’ intends to respond to critical current issues such as the value of money, the impact of the pandemic, the environmental crisis, the ever-changing technologies shaping our society and world today.

‘Body Experiment: Reflection of Technology’ is on view at Comma Space in Singapore, from 16 to 31 October 2021.

To read other writings from the Excerpts series, click here.

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