Jung Seung, a media artist who explores the boundaries between digital technology and human existence, has long pursued the convergence of science and art through diverse media including installation, media sculpture, and interactive video. His works, grounded in philosophical inquiries into the relationships between life and information, human and machine, material and immaterial, seek to manifest points of expanded perception through art. In collaboration with scientists, engineers, and developers, Jung collects data from biological growth processes and transforms them into visual, auditory, and performative expressions. These data are processed in real time via custom-designed software and materialized as interactive works that move autonomously or respond to the audience’s presence. Through this approach, Jung expands beyond the functional use of technology toward fundamental questions concerning sensation, empathy, and existence.
Jung’s early works consisted primarily of installations employing simple mechanisms operating without electricity or everyday objects. During this period, he depicted social landscapes and human figures in humorous and intuitive ways, actively engaging physical interaction with the audience. Since 2016, however, his practice has shifted toward technology-centered approaches, expanding into digital-based sculptural experimentation. In particular, with “universe,” “life,” and “data” as key concepts, he launched experimental projects combining visual art with science and technology. Beginning from the hypothesis that “the universe is filled with innumerable data, and every entity leaves behind traces (Data) or influences (Force),” his practice foregrounds what he terms the “law of data invariability.” This emphasis on the precision and creative potential of information led him to propose the concept of “data refraction,” reinterpreting modes of information use through novel artistic frameworks.
The works presented in this exhibition embody the culmination of Jung’s sustained experiments in translating digital technologies into artistic language. Notably, his works incorporating swarm intelligence, real-time sensor interaction, and data-driven algorithms function not merely as technical devices but as entities akin to living organisms.
Les Sentinelles is an interactive kinetic object that collects data from environmental conditions, audience movement, and acoustic responses in a given site, translating them into structural rhythms and shifting visual forms in real time. By integrating LED lighting, servo motors, and amplified sound systems, the work generates a network in which each data source influences modular units, and the entire structure pulsates and reacts like a living organism. Employing the concept of a “digital pulse,” the work analogizes mechanical rhythm to a biological heartbeat, thereby attempting to realize a “sensing machine.” The pulse, regulated not by repetition but by sensory data and environmental input, reveals both the autonomy of individual sculptural units and the collective organicity of the system as a whole.
Refraction of Data is a media installation visualizing the flow and transference of information, centered on the artist’s ongoing exploration of the immaterialization and sensorial transformation of data. Based on audiovisual input, the work demonstrates how sensed information is transformed into non-regular visual and auditory forms, producing unpredictable patterns that reflect human structures of perception. Jung’s application of swarm intelligence operates as an artistic metaphor for the non-verbal collaboration and order observed in human society and the natural world. Each modular unit independently receives and responds to data, yet together they form a cohesive network, interacting in harmony. This dynamic offers an artistic response to the tensions between individuality and systemic order, as well as to the emergence of new organic structures mediated by technology.
By extending technological apparatuses from “tools” to “entities,” Jung Seung proposes a new aesthetic paradigm where data, sensation, life, and consciousness intersect. Through experiences of “resonance” with mechanical beings, his works prompt reflections on the co-evolution of humans and technology.
