Looking Outwards 09: A Focus on Women and Non-binary Practitioners in Computational Art

A permanent art installation created in 2012, Assembly is built of acrylic blocks and steel combined with digital emulsion. 5,500 blocks hang in the air, while digital light is projected onto their faces. This allows the spectator to study “a boundary line between digital and natural worlds, experiencing figurations of imaginary digital forms rendered into the limiting error-driven physical system.” The artist is trying to display how for the digital world to exit in the real world, it must bend to the rules of physical existence, while also gaining new possibilities. 

Assembly was produced by Kimchi and Chips, a Seoul based art studio founded by Mimi Son and Elliot Woods in 2009. They use a research based approach, especially with volumetric images in fog and 3D projection onto non-design forms.

For Assembly, the production staff are Minjae Kim and Minjae Park. The mathematicians are Daniel Tang and Chris Coleman-Smith. 

What drew me to this project is how it combines such rigid, physical objects with something as malleable and inconstant as digital light. Until recently, artwork has been restricted to one medium, or groups of similar media. With recent development of so much digital technology, artists have countless more options. Technology is also at the point where combining vastly different mediums is relatively accessible for the average artist, which will allow art to constantly evolve and expand in its possibilities.