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Memories of that Person Amidst War Encountered within Virtual Reality

As I entered a corner of the exhibition hall, I was greeted by walls adorned with war images, with green lights filling the space from above and below. Amidst the stillness, I noticed a spectator wearing a headset, walking on what seemed to be a plane floor, marked with contour lines or coordinates, but it was difficult to discern which.

The staff first informed the audience about safety precautions and guidelines. Then they proceeded to place wireless headsets on the participants. After a while, the images on the headset changed. As I looked around, I found myself in what seemed to be someone’s room, with the person typing on a keyboard and writing something. Cigarette smoke was swirling in the air. I synchronized my hand movements with the person’s moving hand, as if our hands were connected, and we performed actions together. Engrossed in observing the person, I soon found myself connected to their memories, delving into the realm of their recollections. In this way, I found myself immersed in the midst of the Yangpyeong Jiphyeong-ri battlefield in Gyeonggi-do, a lesser-known location of the Korean War, about which I had little prior knowledge. Entering the forgotten memories of individuals who participated in the war—soldiers, war correspondents, nurses, and others—I found myself situated within their perspectives and gazes. When my hand aligned with theirs as they fired the gun, I experienced a subtle mix of emotions. Despite being in a virtual environment, I couldn’t help but hesitate. It felt as if I existed within their thoughts, and I could hear snippets of their stories. I aligned my movements with the hands that were digging into the frozen ground amidst the winter of war. I found myself entering another one of their experiences. As they began recounting their story, I too sat down in the makeshift shelter. I started to feel a sense of fear being the only one standing amidst the war.

Within someone’s memories, I felt the overwhelming uncertainty of when this war would end, the concern and worry for those left behind, and in my own dreams of returning after the war, a fleeting sense of excitement. I walked along the war trench, exploring its paths. In the virtual space of a pencil-drawn scene, reminiscent of the war scenes in the animation The Man Who Planted Trees, I was able to move, touch, and explore in a tangible manner. However, there was no sense of depth, touch, or smell in the experience.

Creating Interactive Art Experiences within Virtual Reality Based on Personal Archives and Interviews

In the work The Forgotten War by curator B (representative Kwon Ha-yun), personal archives and interviews, including donated photographs and videos, from French soldiers who fought in the Yangpyeong Battle of Chipyong-ni in Gyeonggi-do served as the foundation. These materials were then reimagined and reinterpreted through artistic creativity, resulting in a reconstructed narrative presented in 3D animation.

This piece, starting from records, reconstructs individual memories and emotions, crossing the boundaries between memory and documentation, as well as between virtual and reality. By physically engaging with virtual characters, one can make contact with their emotions, transcending these boundaries. The Battle of Chipyong-ni, in particular, was a significant one where the UN forces and the Chinese forces clashed, resulting in sacrifices from both sides. Instead of focusing on the victors and the defeated, this artwork draws upon the experiences and thoughts of American, Chinese, Korean, and French soldiers who were there, transcending nationalities. These perspectives are derived from their interviews.

While there is a relatively abundant and well-preserved collection of materials from the French soldiers, there is a lack of documentation and information regarding the Korean soldiers who participated in the battle. Fortunately, interview materials from a Korean soldier who came down from North Korea and ultimately passed away were able to be included in the project. The pencil-drawn art style within the virtual reality setting indeed evokes a sense of beauty and adds an emotional depth to the experience. It is said that among the American soldiers who participated in the Battle of Chipyong-ni, there was a student from the California College of Arts and Crafts (present day California College of the Arts). According to the production background, this student artist had created realistic pencil drawings of the war scenes while sitting on the battlefield, and these drawings were incorporated into the animated scenes of the piece.

It is my personal belief that the emotional impact of the war stories was amplified through the power of the pencil drawings, as they were able to capture and convey the essence of the experiences. In location-based virtual reality, there is no set perspective, so I could see things as I moved my body. I could see things differently based on my perspective as I walked around. Even when there are three people present, each person can see it from their own perspective. The experience is about 20 minutes, but there is an extensive research list of resources such as books, museums, and cinema to create this work, and I could feel the team’s exceptional skills and intense and sophisticated research efforts to create an artistic experience through technologies such as participatory location-based virtual reality, multiplayer, 3D animation, and immersive sound.

Creation of a Window through Workshops with the Artist and Citizens on the Theme of “Place and Community”
<Interactive Art Lab>"

Amidst the growing popularity of mass media exhibitions that create powerful visual effects on large media canvases based on traditional masterpieces, this interactive art research and development showcase, what kind of artistic experience does “Remembering/Sensing: Community of Experience,” offer? Could virtual reality (VR) technology evoke empathy for the experience of war at that time? How can it be connected to “the current self” and how can one immerse oneself in it? And how can the combination of art and technology evoke certain emotions? We were curious about what kind of community we could encounter through this exhibition.

ACC Interactive Art Lab is a research and development project that explores the fusion of art and cutting-edge technology, developing innovative and experimental hybrid content, and creating future-oriented art through a lab-based approach. In 2023, based on collaboration and convergence among various experts, artists, and creators, a hybrid art content focused on “audience participation and interaction” was planned and researched under the theme of “space and community.” The showcase of the creative results was presented to the audience. Beyond just researching interactive technology, the aim was to explore and examine the hybrid space of boundaries and entanglements, focusing on the interaction between “differences” as a topic. By viewing this space as an “artistic possibility,” the project sought to delve into and investigate it. The artists conducted workshops with citizen researchers for a period of two months. The citizen researchers served as co-creators and artists, reflecting on and discussing a specific theme to create and present their artworks.

<Backyard>, a Collaborative Space of Imagination Created through the Exploration and Merging of Individual Memories

The work <In My Backyard> by Seoul Express (Jeon Yoo-jin and Hong Min-gi) was conducted as a creative research project. It traced individual fragments of memory like clues during the creative workshop <My Backyard: Unearthing Memories>. Through this process, it explored how personal data and narratives could expand into a collective narrative in the imaginative space known as the “Backyard.”

The participating researchers researched their own memories and grappled with their pasts, digging into personal spaces. Each researcher discovered their precious memories unconsciously and gathered their own datasets that included related stories, texts, images, sounds, and data. These individual datasets were recreated and reinterpreted using various technologies such as game engines and 3D scanning, resulting in a merging of still images, videos, texts, datasets, and sounds into a diverse range of media that collectively formed the “Backyard.”

The video for <In My Backyard> utilized virtual reality engine technology, where the background space appeared realistic, while the objects were a blend of 3D-scanned images. The highlighted red words serve as a kind of guide, subtly connecting individual memories within the community and influencing each other. As a result, it creates a dream-like subconscious world that appears unreal, akin to a dream. More than 10 participants from all over the country, who did not know each other beforehand, shared their own memories, forming a sense of empathy and engaging in a collective endeavor of public work. The research findings, which involved exploring the individual memories of the 10 participants, were also exhibited. Personally, I find the exhibition of these citizen participants to be the most impressive.

Exploration of the Interaction between Humans and Machines in the Realm of Art

Studio Embers 703’s work, <Electric Dreams>, was inspired by Philip K. Dick (the original author of the novel that inspired the film Blade Runner in 1982) and his science fiction short story Electric Dreams. It all began with the words of the artificial intelligence character in the story, “Human emotions play a crucial role in shaping the worth of humans.”

This multi-channel interactive artwork embodies the artistic interpretation of the question “Can machines dream and have emotions like humans, and can they emulate human emotions and artistic creation?” It explores the ability of machines to follow human emotions and artistic creation. Across 8 screens, various images are generated through prompts (commands, questions) inspired by Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, and these images are then reinterpreted through interaction with the audience, raising questions about “dreams and the future of humanity.” This artwork is the result of a workshop where the author and 10 citizen researchers experimented with artistic creation using various generative AI techniques, exploring coding and interactive programming languages.

Interactions and a Sense of Community Experienced through One’s Own Body and the Bodies of Others

<The Gazing Movement> by the Cho Yeong-ju Performance Team (Cho Yeong-ju, Kim Seung-rok, Kim Ji-hyeong, and others) is a performance piece that is based on insights into interaction, bodily communication, and forming relationships embedded in everyday care labor such as childcare, care for people with disabilities, and elderly care.

The artist, along with choreographers and dancers (Shin Seon-jeong, Jeong Jae-woo), conducted four workshops on “Gazing at Each Other” involving 80 citizen participants from Gwangju. Parents, couples, caregivers for individuals with developmental disabilities, and mothers with their children participated in the workshops. They supported and assisted each other by holding and embracing each other’s bodies, creating a movement performance that allowed them to experience receiving comfort and support from one another. After the workshops, professional psychologists, physiotherapists, and rehabilitation therapists collaborated with the artist to produce videos through movement research.

When you visit the exhibition space, you will find prepared floor mats, cushions, props, and more. As viewers watch the produced videos, they can also witness the audience actively participating in the experience. The artwork provides an experience for the spectators to feel a temporary sense of community and connection through the movement of their bodies in the shared space of the exhibition hall.

Curator Jang Hyeon-hee, who planned the exhibition, said: “If we can feel the same thing through art, then isn’t this also a form of community? Throughout the workshops, there were many discussions about what constitutes a community. Let’s consider other communities that go beyond blood ties, geographical proximity, and nationality. I imagined a utopian community where we can communicate, connect, and share experiences together. In that context, when visitors come to the exhibition and immerse themselves, engaging with one another, it creates another form of communal experience within the realm of artistic appreciation. It can be seen that the main purpose of this interactive art research is to explore and question new connections with communities through interdisciplinary artistic creation, which is different from conventional methods of knowledge transmission.”

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