WEBZINE ACC

A sensible experience granted by media chandelier and circular floor projection mapping

Going down the steep slope escalator from the ACC Culture Center Complex Theater No.1 into the No.2 exhibition, you will encounter a big, tall, circular rampant. This spatial experience is very unfamiliar. Should I enter? Every time I came here, I hesitated to go inside as the surroundings made me feel so tiny. But this time, I felt different. My sight was captivated at first glance. The pile of radiant light penetrated into my eyes from the high ceiling in the circular center beyond the entrance. It was the media chandelier. I moved forward step by step and stood right below the chandelier, which was located in the center of the circular space. While watching the performance of light as if watching stars falling from the sky, I heard an explosive sound. I could not tell if the sound was that of waves or whales. The floor, what was once a big glacier, shatters and spreads in an instant. Children hesitate and instinctively jump on each chunk of ice. But then, where everything has melted all of a sudden, they try to escape, not knowing what to do in the middle of the ocean. Rocks and canyons are formed at the spot where the seawater used to exist, and in an instant, trees form a thick forest. The forest quickly changes into a city full of skyscrapers, roads, and automobiles. Then I hear a sandstorm coming, and all of a sudden, the place turns into a sand desert, and seawater starts to fill the desert. When the seawater slowly approaches, children run around as if they are playing hide and seek with the wave. But once again, the waves turn the desert into an ocean. The ocean freezes and creates glaciers. The circulation of nature crisis repeats.

Anthropocene, an era that fights against the natural environment destroyed by humanity

Children were mesmerized, entertained, and frightened inside the wide floor projection mapping and sound at the center of the large-size circular structure. They ran around within the image and stopped, stayed at the center and then came out of the mapping. The process repeated. The charm of light from the media chandelier and the contrasting sense of crisis caused by the Anthropocene, the feeling of intense pressure coming from the space that looks like a big circular rampant, and the freedom of circular square coexist. Just like the contradiction of humans in the Anthropocene, who are surviving thanks to the Earth’s environment, but at the same time at risk of driving themselves into extinction by destroying that very environment.
Going upstairs from the circular square to the second floor of the building, there is a media room. The visitors can experience the changes of the Earth caused by humanity, including various causes of the Anthropocene from the touch screen. Slowly dragging the image of petals from the LED touch screen, the projection about the environmental changes categorized by causes fills up the media chandelier and media room.
Through the research of scientists, our current situation in 2021 shows us that rapid changes in the natural environment brought about the extinction and appearance of various species. The geographical age we learned is known to have gone through a total of five biological extinctions while going through the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cenozoic eras. They were mainly brought by the changes in the external environment, not by the species themselves. In 2000, geologist Paul Crutzen named the new geographical age where humanity caused extinction an Anthropocene. Anthropocene indicates an era where humanity fights against the Earth's environment due to the natural environment destroyed by humanity. After the 1950s, which is the start of the Anthropocene, the Earth has started to release radioactivity, plastic, concrete, chicken bone, etc., from all stratums. The crisis to the sixth mass extinction is seen as the start of the Anthropocene. The media room on the 2nd floor reminds us of fine dust, air pollution, marine pollution, forest fire, a big earthquake, flood caused by climate crises, a threat to nuclear war, etc., which have already become our reality, and reminds us of both dystopic perspectives and utopic perspectives.

The crisis of Earth’s environment contemplated through media experience

Children have already seen a new way of life in 2045, where Earth’s depressing reality and virtual reality are mixed throughout the movie Ready Player One (2018). They wonder if humans can survive on another planet other than Earth, like Mars, or like the movie The Martian (2015), if we can really grow a 'potato (plant)' from there. TV news broadcasts show live images of the destruction of the natural ecosystem caused by climate disaster forest fire in Australia or the current situation of the Canary Islands in Spain after the eruption of a volcano. How did dinosaurs become extinct? Numerous questions from children who were merely wondering while reading books might no longer be the story of a faraway land. Our generation is more used to visual media than books and written languages, and we are realizing, experiencing, and contemplating the world through the eyes of the media. In this sense, it is meaningful to approach this issue of the Earth's environment and ecology with a sensible method of media art experience.
Earth is now 4.6 billion years old. The exhibition ‘The Memory of the Earth’ remembers the past that becomes the cause of the current Anthropocene at the same time reminding people that we are still living on the same Earth. It implies that memories can be different based on the current life, and the current life can change the future. Therefore, the exhibition ‘The Memory of the Earth’ contains the past, present, and future of the Earth; at the same time, it is a symbolic expression and a recommendation for contemplation that suggests the audience imagine and look thoughtfully together.

A futuristic art museum for the MZ generation

The ACC Culture Center Complex Theater No. 2, which pursues a futuristic art museum for the MZ generation, will be operated as a permanent media art experience zone in the future. The media content that presented ‘The Earth Environment and Ecology' as its topic for its pilot business will be enhanced more delicately in the experiential perspective of the audience. They will constantly be experimenting various new media in the new era, such as residency, video art, experimental cinema, VR performance, design lab, etc., and will be presenting meaningful topics in the same era as media content.
The exhibition ‘The Memory of the Earth’ is an immersive media art exhibition that helps visitors experience Earth’s environmental issues through media and contemplate the possibility of coexistence between the ecosystem and civilization based on the main concept, ‘Imagining the Anthropocene through art’. The exhibition will run from August 24th to October 24th at the Circle of the ACC Complex Theater No.2.

• Written by Yun-hee Cheon uni94@hanmail.net
  Photo. In-ho Hwang. photoneverdie@naver.com
  
  2021.10