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We Are Romantic
Interactive Multimedia Installation, Byeong Sam Jeon, 2004-2005
Project Abstract
The interactive multimedia
installation, “We Are Romantic”, allows viewers to experience the consequences
of choice by interacting with a series of real-time and prepared video images
meant to symbolize war and peace. The
interaction occurs through a bundle of flowers embedded with sensors allowing the viewer to navigate a story.
Project Description
“We Are Romantic” is a real-time video of the viewer overlapped with a short video of an Iraqi girl who paints flowers. When the viewer enters the installation
room, s/he sees a projected video image on the front wall and a bunch of
flowers hanging in the air at the center of the space. At first, the screen image shows the viewer
the sentence “Hold onto the flowers as long as you can.” If the viewer holds the flowers as the
sentence indicates, s/he will see the video of the girl starting to draw the
same flowers that s/he (the viewer) is holding.
If the viewer puts the flowers down in
the middle of the video, s/he sees the girl’s painting as it fades into a scene
in which the flower painting is surrounded by the rubble of a collapsed building
where the girl had once lived. Then the
participant will see a real-time video of her/himself overlapped with the
well-known image of the air invasion of Baghdad. If s/he continuously holds the flowers until the girl finishes
drawing the flowers, the participant will watch a real-time video image of
her/himself holding the flowers superimposed on another video image with very
different ending.
The first initials of each of the words
in the title, “We Are Romantic”, create a word “WAR”. I think we are romantic enough in our own communities, but we are
able to choose peace only when we remove the superficial distinctions that we
create between our lives and those of the “other”. Through the interactive work, I give viewers a chance to think
about how, as individuals, we choose war or peace in every moment.
The Goals of the Project
I am thinking we are romantic enough in
our own communities, but we sometimes seem to exclude others at the same
time. Difference is not evil: we need
to know what the “other” is, and how we think about the “other” in the world in
order to live more peacefully. Through
this interactive multimedia installation, “We Are Romantic”, my hope is the
viewer may think about what others are, what the relationship is between us and
others, and what others do for us and/or we do for others to have a rich
life. It is not until we put ourselves
in the situations of others that we can fully understand “the other”.
Vision
As a multimedia artist, I explore sociopolitical
issues. I employ conceptual approaches
by experimenting with video installations that include sensor-based interactive
technologies and computer programming.
Currently, I am working on the “We Are Romantic” project to investigate
the ways in which technology-based artwork can assist human beings in
connecting to the wisdom inherent in life.
Using this wisdom, we may be able to find clues that lead us to solve
the problems that currently are resulting in war.
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