Recomposing Malevich
Projector, book/Physical Interaction/2008
Awarded - Output 12 Competition, Adobe Design Award Semifinal list
Exhibition - IDEA09: Arts at the Digital Edge Muncie, IN(2009), Five: Young Korean Artist at Korean Cultural Center, LA(2009)

Brief description

This project focuses on conjuring up the subconscious mind of the people through abstract forms such as circles, rectangles, triangles and squares, that in combination, create their own paintings with conscious mind.

I was interested in the relationships between the conscious mind and subconscious mind, and how artists in the past have considered, approached, and expressed those concepts in their paintings. In case of the book, “The Non-Objective World” by Kasimir Malevich, two basic types of creation can be distinguished. The first initiated by the conscious mind, serves so-called practical life, and deals with concrete visual phenomena; the other, stemming from the subconscious or superconscious mind, stands apart from all ‘practical utility’ and treats abstract visual phenomena.

In this big book, you can see forms of squares and circles moving around with different textures on the book. By flipping over the larger pages, participants can manipulate the square shapes projecting on the book. With the small pages, participants can manipulate the circular shapes on the book. The behavior of flipping over the two different-sized book allows participants to create their own paintings.

Concept
When we simply notice the most abstract forms like circles and squares, what come to our mind? This Malevich's painting does not mean simplified forms from materialized objects. It is the status of pure blank and darkness. It is not related to people's will. What I tried to express here is we are manipulating those subconscious shapes with our consciousness which is by the behivor of fliping over the pages.

Physical and functional description
Physically, this is six, seven times bigger than normal book. Plus, inside the black cover of the book, there are two light sensors are embedded which can perceive and detect the amount of the light. One sensor is on edge of the book and the other is in the middle of the book. Each page has the square shape of hole for translucent papers which are to control the light of the sensor. So, by fliping over the outside pages, participants can manipulate the square shapes and by fliping over the inside small pages, participants can manipulate the circle shapes projecting on the book.

Media and Mechanical point of view
In this project, I used lignt sensor and video clip. So, participant manupulate the movies with the degree of light. I tested with various kinds of paper to measure the light such as tranparent paper tranlucent paper, plain paper, or thick paper to know the amoutn of light going through the paper. After that, I calculated the page number to match the movie clips. So, at first when people open the book, it starts with the number one page and when arrive at the end of page the movie clip end. This book is entirely empy blank book which has combined with two books. The video clip is projected on the book from the ceiling.


Succeed/Not Succeed/Improvement

Initially, the shapes on the book were hard to tell the users can manuplate them since they(circles and squares) are going around all over the book. In addition, even if the participants controled only one aspact of the book just like circle, the shape of square also changed at the same time. So, if I improve more this book, I need to seperate the area of shapes and I need to make the participants feel more they are acturally creating and affecting the forms on the book.

However, after a while people can get the idea how it works. This book is more about experimeting with the abstract shapes and meditative interactive piece. By fliping over the pages one by one with different size of the book, slowly participatnes can get the entire images of the book which are the entire of the movie clip.

In the case of the video clips, it was also hard to see the differnce between beginning and endding of movie clip. There could be dramtic changes of the sequence or movement of the forms let people perceive the proceed of the pages .

recomposing malevich from yuseung kim on Vimeo.

recomposing malevich2 from yuseung kim on Vimeo.