*c-lab 7.0 Project X Taehyun Kwon

인터-페이스-아나토미 INTER-FACE-ANATOMY

2023. 7. 28. Fri. - 7. 29. Sat. (2회차)

In 2023, the Coreana Museum of Art *c-lab 7.0 explores the possibility of a 'Media-Body'. We will experiment with artistic methods through which to sense 'the real' that transcends bodily limitations by liberating the media-body that had been locked inside the physical 'body.' In the hope that this attempt would help us broaden our cognitive reach, we aim to open up the meaning of the 'body' to embrace diverse forms. 

Curator Taehyun Kwon's 'Inter-Face-Anatomy' is a lecture performance and workshop that considers the problem of treating the interface as an object while directly using and dissecting various game interfaces. It was the rare opportunity to dissect interface devices that were becoming part of the body with various experts, including gamers, cultural researchers, and game controller designers.

How does the game interface become both material and culture-making actors? Through this project, I hope we can dissect the material structure of inter-interfaces to think about how interfaces organize body movements, how inter-interfaces connect to the body, how inter-interfaces make different plays, and how inter-interfaces make up cultures.

Day1 / Game Interface and Game Culture: Emergence of Wind God Fist(WGF) in Tekken

Have you ever played with the joystick "Made in Cheonggyecheon"? If you've been to an arcade in Korea, you've probably played with it. Even if it is an arcade joystick that looks the same at first glance, there are often mechanical differences when you open it. The mechanical form of joystick levers, such as tetragonal, octagonal, and matte, has diversified as operators importing entertainment machines have created a different form from their original form, usually for economic reasons. Importantly, these mechanical differences do not end up simply in economic matters. For example, in the "Iron Fist" series, the so-called "pungshinryu" technologies, which are difficult to enter as imported joysticks, are more easily executed on cheaper matte levers. In the first workshop, we analyze specific examples of how differences in interfaces change gameplay, and further affect the game culture as a whole, and explore each interface device by touching it and playing the game together.

Day2 / Interface-Human-Posthuman: From "Pump it up" to VR, and beyond the Neuralink

Game interfaces that respond not only to fingers, but to the whole body, have existed longer than expected. In the second workshop, we analyze the characteristics of interfaces that connect to the body in a variety of ways, from "pump" that you step on and play to "bit saver" that you play with head-on HMD devices. Players also created the so-called "freestyle" genre by manipulating the "pump" that they are supposed to step on with their feet with their whole body, including their hands and heads. From cultural aspects derived from the exclusive use of these interfaces to recent situations created by so-called VR interfaces such as Apple's "Vision Pro," and further discussions and SF phases of the "Neural Link" project that connects sensors directly to the brain. Extend your concerns about the interface and body from the past to the future.

About Speakers

Eun-ki Jeon(Cultural researcher, Ph.D Candidate in Digital & Cultural policy)

Jeon Eun-ki majored in cultural anthropology and cultural research, and is currently working as a researcher at the Cheonggyecheon Technology and Culture Research Institute and Hanyang University Global Multicultural Research Institute. Research activities are continuing with interest in the historical formation process of Korean information capitalism and the relationship between technology and culture/politics/economy. He published papers such as "A Study on the Transformation of Electronic Entertainment Culture since the 1990s" and "Joystick-Producers of Arcade Game Culture"

Seung-seop Shim(Industrial Designer)

Seung-seop Shim majored in industrial design at the National University of the Arts in Berlin. As we study ergonomics and universal design, we constantly think about how to make it more comfortable for people to use the product and achieve the best results at the same time. It has developed a game interface by combining this design philosophy with games. It created custom levers of the world-renowned "Tekken" professional gamer "Knee," custom levers of "Street Fighter" professional gamer "Insert," rotary levers of Samdeoksa, Jamix Neo, Jamix Mini, and io Lab joystick.

About Performer

Kyung-deok Jang(Professional Gamer)

Kyung-deok Jang is a professional gamer who has been active in various competitions and performances in the field of rhythm games since the 1990s. He has won the World Pump Festival (WPF) Korean national team in 2005, the Korea Pump Festival (KPF) Seoul tournament in 2008, the WPF Korean national team wild card in 2011, the International Festival Korean national team in 2016, the Pump It Up World Grand Prix Last Carnival in 2020, and the National Challenge Pump Festival in 2022. In addition to his career as a professional gamer, he is a former gamer in the NX version of Pump It Up and a development team leader who participated in the production of dance natation.

About Curator

Tae-hyun Kwon 

Tae-hyun Kwon is a curator who plans exhibitions and various projects. I think about how to think about something outside of art as an object inside art. Research continues with a weight on the perspective of grasping political things as a matter of sensation. Exhibitions such as "뒤, 따라" (Peace Museum, 2021), "flop: A Dialectic of Rules and Fouls" (Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, 2023), and "Materi-delia" (Ulsan Art Museum, 2023) were curated.

[Venue]

Coreana Museum of Art, c-cube (B2)

[Time]

Day1: 7. 28. Fri 19:00 - 21:00

Day2: 7. 29. Sat 17:00 - 19:00

[Ticket Price]

KRW 10,000 

* Only 40 tickets are available at each show time. 

[Production Credit]

Curator: Taehyun Kwon

Researcher & Speaker: Eun-ki Jeon, Seung-seop Shim

Performer: Kyung-deok Jang 

Consultant: Youngwook Oh, Kyunghyuck Lee

Photographer: Jimin Gu

Game devices from GAMETOPIA, SAMDUCKSA, ISTMALL, Youngwook Oh

Organized by *c-lab 7.0, Coreana Museum of Art

Supported by Coreana Cosmetics Co., Ltd.

Tae-hyun Kwon, Inter-Face-Anatomy, 2023, Coreana Museum of Art

Tae-hyun Kwon, Inter-Face-Anatomy, 2023, Coreana Museum of Art

Tae-hyun Kwon, Inter-Face-Anatomy, 2023, Coreana Museum of Art

Tae-hyun Kwon, Inter-Face-Anatomy, 2023, Coreana Museum of Art

Tae-hyun Kwon, Inter-Face-Anatomy, 2023, Coreana Museum of Ar

Tae-hyun Kwon, Inter-Face-Anatomy, 2023, Coreana Museum of Art

Tae-hyun Kwon, Inter-Face-Anatomy, 2023, Coreana Museum of Art

Tae-hyun Kwon, Inter-Face-Anatomy, 2023, Coreana Museum of Art

Tae-hyun Kwon, Inter-Face-Anatomy, 2023, Coreana Museum of Art

Tae-hyun Kwon, Inter-Face-Anatomy, 2023, Coreana Museum of Art

About *c-lab

The Coreana Museum of Art *c-lab is a newly conceived annual project, which seeks to provide a platform where creators, curators, theorists, and researchers in the field of arts and culture conduct research and projects, exploring its annual theme. We have selected new topics every year and considered it as an art practice.