• Review: Nathonal Asian Culture Center’s Webzine ACC
• URL: https://www.acc.go.kr/webzine/index.do?article=517&lang=ko
• Publication Date: April 2020
• Author: Jongok Baek

Media Artist Joon Yong Moon:

A World of Shadows Where Fantasies Grow

Joon Yong Moon is a media artist with an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design in New York. He has exhibited internationally at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Microwave, Onedotzero, FILE, Cinekid, Scopitone, and domestically at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Seoul Museum of Art, the Gwangju Design Biennale, and the Kumho Museum of Art. He has been a resident artist at the Incheon Art Platform and received support from the Seoul Museum of Art’s Emerging Artist Exhibition Support Program. His works, which often utilize augmented reality, tangible interfaces, generative art, and sound visualization, have also been featured in art textbooks by Haenam Publishing. Moon combines his roles as an artist, designer, and freelance computer programmer.

joonmoon.net

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From December 5 to 15, 2019, the ACC hosted a showcase for one of its residency programs, Creators in Lab. In this showcase, seven artists exhibited distinctive works under the theme ‘Art & Science.’ As I toured the showcase, I found the installation in ACT Studio 3 particularly impressive. In the exhibition space, rectangular frames containing tree shapes were suspended in the air, and their shadows flickered on the walls. These shadows were created by strong light emanating from flashlight-like devices placed in front of the frames. As I moved the light around, the shapes of the shadows changed accordingly. Upon closer inspection, I noticed something strange. Although the frames contained only tree shapes, the shadows also included figures of animals like deer and birds. Moreover, some birds appeared to fly out of the frames. The installation, combining technical prowess and a sense of fantasy, sparked my curiosity. According to the information on the wall, the artist was Joon Yong Moon, and the title of the work was <Augmented Shadow Test (working title)>, featuring terms like augmented reality, electronic devices, and software.

Terms like ‘Augmented Reality (AR)’ and ‘Virtual Reality (VR)’ are widely heard, but their differences were not entirely clear to me. So I looked up their definitions. ‘Virtual Reality’ is a technology that creates a virtual world similar to reality. For example, when you wear VR goggles, you can see a virtual roller coaster and surrounding environment, making you feel like you’re actually riding a roller coaster. In contrast, ‘Augmented Reality’ does not show a completely virtual world. The best-known example is the popular mobile game ‘Pokémon GO’ from a few years ago. In this game, characters appear on the smartphone camera screen when viewing a specific real-world location. In other words, AR overlays virtual images onto the real world. Understanding the technical meaning of AR, I began to grasp the technology used in <Augmented Shadow Test (working title)>. It seemed to blend real shadows with virtual ones to create diverse changes. However, I still had many questions about his work, including the flashlight-like device. So I conducted a written interview and reviewed his portfolio to better understand Joon Yong Moon’s artistic world.

Media artist Joon Yong Moon introduces himself as an ‘artist and technologist (computer programmer).’ He clarifies his dual identity because he not only creates his artwork but also develops the necessary technology himself. The technology he develops through trial and error often becomes a work of art and an invention in itself. This dual focus on artistic and technical value has been part of his approach from the beginning. Initially starting with an interest in creating animation, he moved on to experimental video work in college and gradually expanded into media art. Throughout this process, he has always shown a keen interest in new technologies. He constantly explores how to apply new technologies to art, experimenting with more innovative art forms. By the time he finished his studies in New York, his unique artistic style had started to emerge.

<Augmented Shadow> (2010) was a thesis project of Joon Yong Moon at Parsons School of Design in New York. It was during this time that Moon began showcasing his intriguing shadow works using a new augmented reality technology he developed. He created this piece based on the idea that the shapes of shadows change with the angle of light, often forming imaginative shapes. This interactive media art piece allows viewers to move cubes on a table, which then alters the shadows of the cubes, as well as the shadows of humans, trees, and birds. Although these images appear to change randomly, a closer look reveals hidden stories within them. Inside each cube’s shadow is a window lit like a small house, inhabited by a shadow person. When the light in the window goes out, the shadow person walks out of the house to find a cube emitting light. The shadow person takes a piece of light and returns to the shadow house, relighting the window and causing surrounding trees to grow. These shadow creatures continue their lives in this virtual world, with their movements endlessly varied by viewer interaction. Through his work, Moon created a fantastical shadow world that blurs the lines between the physical and the intangible, reality and imagination, by combining touchable cubes with virtual images on real shadows. He named this type of work ‘Augmented Shadow’ and has continued to develop it further.

Joon Yong Moon’s interest in the world of shadows continued even after returning to Korea. In his 2012 piece <Inter-Scenery>, presented at the Seoul International Media Art Biennale, he explored shadows in a different way from <Augmented Shadow>. The video projection filling the entire wall of the exhibition hall displayed a night view of the city. Each building in the darkness had windows, but there was no one visible inside them. When a viewer stood in front of the video, one of the windows lit up, revealing a shadow figure identical to the viewer’s silhouette. As the viewer moved around, the shadow figure also appeared in the windows of different buildings. Suddenly, the scene shifted to show the interior of the buildings. The shadow figure, resembling the viewer, wandered through the hallways, moving from door to door and room to room according to the viewer’s movements. Another scene change introduced an endless array of staircases, reminiscent of M.C. Escher’s surreal prints. The shadow figure navigated these staircases along with the viewer’s movements. The scenes created by the artist are a world where the viewer’s shadow figure lives, inducing the viewer’s movement. As the title suggests, it is an interactive scenery. In this exhibition, where reality and the virtual world intermingle and coexist, viewers are prompted to question what is real and where the boundary of the virtual world lies.

While researching the world of shadows, Joon Yong Moon, as a father raising children, consistently took an interest in creating media art that children would enjoy. He pursued ways for viewers to interact with his works naturally, as if they were playing. One such piece is <Flying – Body Pen>, part of the <Flying> series. This work was specifically designed for children aged 5 to 9. Children standing in front of the screen are instructed to spread their arms. As they move their arms and bodies like a bird flying in the sky, the screen magically draws lines resembling the trails of an airplane based on the angles of their arms and bodies. Upon seeing this response, children quickly realize that their bodies are tools for drawing and begin to imagine flying freely like an airplane in the virtual space on the screen, moving their bodies accordingly. This piece allows 1 to 6 participants to draw their own pictures simultaneously, offering an experience akin to creating a collaborative art piece. Exhibited at the Gyeonggi Museum of Art in 2017, this work elicited emotional resonance from many visitors by integrating a play activity everyone has tried at least once in their childhood into media art.

Since presenting <Augmented Shadow> in 2010, which incorporated augmented reality technology, Joon Yong Moon has continued to refine and expand the unique emotional experiences his shadow worlds can evoke. By 2018, he developed a new Augmented Shadow device. This process was complex, involving the creation of a special flashlight-like lighting device, projectors, sensors, computers, and software. From software programming to hardware design, development, and production, the project required significant effort and investment, amounting to several tens of millions of won over an extended period. A considerable portion of this cost went into creating a wireless lighting device, essential for realizing his envisioned shadow world. The device had to be portable, allowing visitors to carry it freely around the exhibition space. Moon solved this challenge by developing an electronic device powered by an internal rechargeable battery. It is rare for an artist to develop such entirely new devices to build an independent artistic world.

The device Moon invented after years of research led visitors into a unique shadow world, exemplified by his work <Hello, Shadow !>, displayed at the 2018 Gwangju Media Art Festival. In the dark exhibition hall, variously sized rectangular boxes were set up, and when visitors used the lighting device to illuminate these boxes, shadows appeared on the walls. These real shadows transformed into images of buildings. The illuminated windows of these buildings revealed shadow figures that waved at the viewers. Telephone poles around the buildings added to the realistic feel of this virtual shadow world. The scenery continuously changed as visitors altered the angle of the lighting device. This was possible because sensors detected the position and angle of the light and shadows, while projectors overlaid computer-generated virtual shadow images onto the real shadows. Visitors became immersed in this poetic, fantastical shadow world without needing to think about the complex augmented reality technology behind it. This work was invited to the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, in 2019 and was nominated for the STARTS Prize.

The Augmented Shadow device developed by Joon Yong Moon has also been applied to children’s educational media art, a field he is particularly interested in. A representative example is <Lighting the Eco>, installed at the Goyang Children’s Museum in 2018. This work was designed to educate children about natural ecosystems, allowing them to explore the causal relationships within the ecosystem playfully using a flashlight-like lighting tool. The dark exhibition hall featured devices displaying various plants and animals, creating a mini ecosystem. Children entering the exhibition would shine their lights on different parts of the walls. Wherever the light hit, natural phenomena would unfold in video form. For instance, water would evaporate to form clouds, which then drifted and released rain, causing water to overflow and flow into rivers. Fish would swim in the rivers, while trees would grow leaves, become lush, and eventually shed their leaves as autumn arrived, leaving only bare branches. In this way, children could joyfully discover and understand natural phenomena as if they were on a treasure hunt. The simplicity of the experience made it easy for parents and teachers to participate with the children, enhancing the educational value. Moon positively views the current trend of using interactive media art as educational play tools. He believes educational media art should be easy to learn, engaging, and fun, like a game. When creating works specifically for children, he intentionally incorporates game elements and customizes the pieces to meet educational objectives from the start.

As introduced earlier, Joon Yong Moon participated in the ACC residency program in 2019. His work <Augmented Shadow Test (working title)>, showcased in December, expanded the shadow world using the Augmented Shadow device from another perspective. While his previous shadow worlds were based on cubic shadows, this showcase featured flat frames installed at various directions and heights in mid-air, creating a sense of three-dimensionality. The shadows of these frames transformed on the walls, enhancing the sense of space. Additionally, deer appeared around trees, and birds flew in flocks through the square frames, creating a complex spatial experience by overlapping flat frames, their shadows, and the evolving shadow world. The main feature of this work is its ability to generate a multifaceted spatial feeling. Visitors could carry a lighting tool and walk around the suspended frames, altering the shadow world according to their perceptions.

Shadows have long evoked poetic, playful, mysterious, or spiritual feelings in humans. Moon, fascinated by shadows that exist on the boundary between reality and fantasy, has created a unique shadow world. He plans to continue researching and developing his unique artistic language to capture the shadow world using new technologies and artistic forms. Through his works, we witness magical fantasies growing from real shadows. It feels as if the once-created shadow world will continue to exist somewhere in the universe. I look forward to experiencing his shadow world again.

Written by Jongok Baek, icezug@hanmail.net
Photos by Joon Yong Moon, joonmoon.art@gmail.com

2020. 04.