Alumni CEO Talk
Alumnus Jiyoon Park (left) being controlled by Hyunjoo Woo, and leaning on Jiyoon Park when he deviates from the expected trajectory,
alumnus Hyunjoo Woo (right). They call each other 'good partners'
Alumni Hyunjoo Woo and Jiyoon Park thought graduating from the Department of Visual Design would lead them to creating opening title sequences for movies or directing films. When she was introduced to Unity, an interactive video content tool, her expectations changed and her life took a different direction. We caught up with the duo to learn more about their journey into the new media field, which they say was as natural as water.
The human connection to technology! It's a sound inside us!
Every night from 7 to 10 p.m., Atelier Gwanghwa (a media façade on the exterior wall of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Gwanghwamun Square) is exhibiting <Hang A Ri> by Woobak Studio. <Hang A Ri> is a media façade that expresses the emotions and life culture of Koreans. The images of Jeju Island, Gyeongju, and Gwanghwamun Square in a jar are transformed into nostalgia for an unfamiliar place, creating a beautiful and fantastical atmosphere. In this exhibition, Woobak Studio dislocates the combination of art and technology into the aesthetics of attraction, narrowing the interface between new media and the public.
<Hang A Ri> Single channel video, animation, stereo, 7 min 47 sec, 2021
"Last December, the same venue hosted Professor Junsu Ha of the Department of Visual Design's <Kwanghwa, 光化, The Splendor,> and we are honored to follow in his footsteps and bring new media art to Gwanghwamun Square, the historical and cultural center of Korea."
Incheon City Museum Media Art Experience Zone, 2022
Woobak Studio, comprised of alumni Hyunju Woo and Jiyoon Park, has been working at the intersection of art and commerce for the past six years. Through immersive video content from museums and galleries in Korea (Gyeonggi-do Museum, Incheon Museum of Art, National Museum of Science and Technology, Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art, Arte Museum, Hwang Soon-won Literature Center, etc. His first solo exhibition in 2021 was AR (<MŏROR PROJECT - About Hesitation>), which represented modern humans who are evading, transferring, and disappearing from their own decisions in an era of excessive information and hyperconnection, and his second solo exhibition (<Future Utilization of the Body>) explored various media (animation, books, websites, games, etc.) in which the body and technology can coexist in a technological media environment (kiosks, QR codes for recording visits, video lessons conducted non-face-to-face, etc. In addition, they have presented various forms of new media, including a body certificate issuance performance that revisits the accumulated life narratives of the elderly (<i-Cookey: Service Webpage>), a webpage that develops fiction based on a fictional worldview and reflects on the meaning of the body drifting as data in an unknown space (<The traces of Quasi>), and a hologram that reconstructs events that were not included in digital maps and allows users to explore them voluntarily (<Escape Maps>). They say their interest in the relationship between technology and the individual began as undergraduates.
<About Hesitation, Exhibition view, Survey, Mind Map, AR Installation, Variable Installation, 2021
"When you enter the department of visual design, you look at the media that led the era, from painting to photography to video, and try to create results with each media medium. As a visual design major, I found it very interesting to see how individuals and society change with each new media."
When Woo talks about the courses he took as an undergraduate, Park adds that class 13 was a lucky class to have gone through so many different media.
"We had a class where we took pictures with film cameras and had a class where we developed prints. Class 13 has experienced the whole process of analog and digital, so I think we have a slightly different perspective than the generation that grew up with only digital. We are asking questions and insights into the process of how smartphones and rapidly changing digital devices that we touch every day work, and what algorithms are applied to the solutions that new technologies come up with."
Destiny with Unity
They weren't buddies or teammates during their undergraduate years. It was in a Unity class they took in the first semester of their third year that they realized they would make a pretty good crew. They were one of the few survivors among their classmates who made it to the end.
"We saw how much they enjoyed the Unity class, so we thought we might like it. The next semester, we started working on our senior exhibition project, and no one asked us to team up first, so we just kind of naturally did. For our senior exhibition, we did an interactive marketing video that allowed users to explore a virtual chocolate planet like they were visiting a pop-up store. At the point of graduation, we weren't sure what we could do or what we wanted to be, but we knew where we were headed, so we decided to just do what we loved until we were thirty and jumped into new media with no plan or dreams."
Ubac Studio Workspace
They worked as researchers and produced a variety of commercial work. At the same time, they founded Hail Studio, named after their surnames, and continued to work on their personal projects. Opportunity came sooner than they expected, and it paid off. City Rhythm, a project supported by the Korea Creative Content Agency, was selected to participate in the Ars Electronica Festival, a worldwide international media art festival founded in 1979 at the Ritz in Austria. It invites, selects and awards media art from around the world) in the Computer Animation section.
<City Rhythm> single channel video, color, sound, 2019
"I applied for a beautiful news project from the Korea Creative Content Agency, and we collaborated with data scientists and various experts in media arts to come up with something. The director I collaborated with told me that he was going to submit it to the Ars Electronica festival, and at the time, neither of us had any idea of the status of Ars Electronica in the global new media scene. We knew it was an international media event, and that there were awards. We paid our own way to go to the Ritz in Austria, where the festival was held, where we were exposed to a wide range of work by international artists, and it was this strange and fantastic experience that got us hooked on new media."
Beyond art and technology, beyond infinite space
After attending the Ars Electronica festival, the duo continued to pursue their personal work, knocking on the doors of public institutions and arts foundation-funded residencies. Two solo exhibitions and two residencies later, they've learned how to make a living as new media artists, one year at a time.
"The first graduation exhibition was held in the department of video design the year I entered the university. It was not easy to meet seniors who were active in the new media artscene. I think I spent a year wandering around the artscene after graduation. Somehow, I spent a year well, so I understood the cycle of the artscene, and I realized things like the procedure and method of preparing for a solo exhibition through a little trial and error. I also had a fun experience. We held our first exhibition at a gallery in Insadong, which was an inappropriate choice of venue because it didn't fit our target audience. I think young people are the ones who can relate deeply to our message, so it would be better to hold the exhibition at a gallery in Seongsu-dong, but Insadong was the only place we could rent at the time. However, the response from the elderly was very good. They said, 'You have an unusual exhibition,' and some of them wanted to experience our work at home and inquired about purchasing it (laughs)."
They turned thirty last year. They're past the age limit they set for themselves, but they're still curious and excited about new media. They say they don't make plans or dream about the future, but they do have a to-do list for this year.
"Hail Studio has been selected as a creator of ZER01ne, a talent platform supported by Hyundai Motor Group. ZER01ne brings together developers, startups, artists, and other talents from various fields to showcase their projects. I'm curious to hear how experts in their respective industries view technology and how it changes people. I'm also excited to see how they will be stimulated by our collaborations and how they will find their voice."
In the age of convergence, how do we share and create the future of human and social phenomena that are changing due to technological advancements? How can new art inspire humanity in the digital age? May the message of Hail Studio connect and resonate with the world beyond art and technology. No plans, no dreams! We're looking forward to seeing what they come up with in their light-filled improvisational fantasy.
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