Sydney Salamy: Looking Outwards-08

Mimi Son is a teacher of Interactive Storytelling at Korea’s Kaywon School of Art and Design and art director at Kimchi and Chips, an art and design studio she founded with Elliot Woods which is based Seoul. She studied Interaction Design at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design after finishing her MA degree of Interaction Design at the Landsdown Centre of Middlesex University, located in London. Currently, she is researching the effects of technology when approaches creatively and the interactions between emotional and tangible things. In her presentation, she and Woods talk about their projects that deal with the relationship between the material and the immaterial (ie: objects with lights displayed over them). She would describe herself as loving nature and art and experimenting with them, which is what led her into the field she is now.

• Son’s work deals a lot with computers mixed with physical objects. Her projects would be aided with computer programs, such as with Lunar Surface, where a sheet moves back and forth in the wind. A sphere was created inside a program, corresponding to a light projection. The projection is of a circle and is shone onto the sheet. The movements of the sheet are included in the program over the sphere and as it moves, the circle size changes. Basically, if the sheet is blown forwards or backwards so it is toward the end of the sphere, then the circle will be small, and if it’s in the middle it will be big. A similar project is Line Segments Space which is shown below. Strings are set up in a black room, and light is shone and varied on specific strings to create a pretty light show. Because the strings exist in a computer program as well, the lights are able to be mapped very specifically.
• I admire the way she is able to mix stuff that isn’t physically real with stuff that is in order to create her works. Her Lunar Surface project really stuck out to me for this reason. The fact that the sheet exists and the sphere doesn’t, yet they are still able to interact is very cool to me, especially since decades earlier this would be impossible. Besides all this, the resulting work is pretty. 
• The projects I admire the most are the ones where light is projected onto objects. This would include Lunar Surface, Line Segments Space, Assembly, Lit Tree, and Link. I admire these ones the most because of how they look visually and the effort it took to make them. Most of the projects listed have to have a number of physical objects created and placed for something to be projected onto them, and this is all done by hand, which is obviously difficult. The results are beautiful. The way the projections interact with the physical pieces looks so amazing and cool, it’s hard to describe them. The sounds accompanying the pieces also help place the viewer into a certain “atmosphere”, which enhances the viewing experience.

• In this presentation, Mimi Son is presenting with Elliot Woods. They present their work through explanation. They don’t move around much, just stand near a podium and talk. They discuss their projects and processes. When doing so, they use visually aids that are projected on a screen near them. These aids are either pictures or videos demonstrating their projects, studio, diagrams, and other art. This gives the audience something to look at which is also relevant to what they are discussing. The videos sometimes had sound as well. They would also tell jokes every once in a while, which made the audience laugh. What I can learn from this is that what I say has the most importance. However, I can aid my dialogue with things that are both pleasing visually and aurally. This helps the audience get a better idea of what the speaker is talking about. This is important since it gives the audience something to focus on during the presentation. With presentations this long, people can start to doze off, so giving them something to look at can help keep their attention. Jokes have a similar effect. Since they occur even more sporadically, they surprise and wake up the audience. Presentations I give will probably follow this format, maybe adding anything I think could improve it, such as walking along the stage/moving around more to keep the audience up.