Sensory Garden: Night Falls, Light Fulls

Changhwan Moon

〈A More Perfect World〉, 2021.

Mixed media, Mixed materials, projection mapping, color, sound, Dimensions variable, 3 min, Commissioned by Asia Culture Center

Changhwan Moon is filled with delight in that he can fully explore his imagination that can only stem from the artist himself in a void space, “presetting a certain space.” He is interested in ambiguous attributes and visible-but-in tangible space, such as what takes shape but with no shape and what can be visible but is invisible. In an era where the boundary between virtuality and reality, he attempts to make us realize the time and existence of ourselves. He raises questions that “In the digital era, to what extent can technology change art?” and “How can artists today utilize technology?” He majored in sculpture and has expanded his scope to photography, installations, and media art. By doing so, he intends to become an artist “who ceaselessly changes in various ways instead of being a restricted one” while confronting a new way and trying to make imagination a reality without any hesitation

The Depth of Nature, Lightness, Assembly & Re-assembly, Existence, and Life As we live in an era when our area of activity is restricted, we have led a life by giving up the collective tendency, which is the most simple and necessary for humans. Once everyone’s movement stops due to a national disaster, aspects of nature that were invisible have become visible. When looking back, we might have been unable to see the beauty amid the excessively complicated skeins of humans, passing by and forgetting it. The industry of humans seems to expand and at the same time destroy nature; it poses a threat to the “inside” and “outside” of human life. Contrary to the violence of humans inflicted on nature, nature, while being intertwined with us, has turned into a bigger threat to humanity. As long as humans can gain economic values, humans connect everything to capital, making natural resources exhausted rapidly.
The plants in the parks and gardens established in the splendid cities only aim to artificially reproduce the image of nature that is pleasant to humans and to be consumed. Thus, humans enjoy life amidst artificial nature made for our convenience. Yet, an act of creating happiness by adding artificial nature to artworks does not simply have the goal of satisfying humans.
In the wake of the pandemic era, exchanges among the people have discontinued in society, and the overall global economy has drastically deteriorated. In contrast, education and cultural activities in a non-face-to-face way are rapidly growing and promoting life in “the virtual space.” Due to the rapid advancement in science and technology, this world creates virtual spaces, and we call such a virtual space a “metaverse.”
The artwork contains the artificial and typical nature whose image we have conveniently consumed in such spaces and overlaps this nature with the Façade located in the center of the city. The viewer who stands on the image projected onto the floor becomes an avatar in one metaverse. Every viewer who walks on the concrete floor can reproduce the images of nature where we can go on a picnic or take a rest and reassemble the violent relationships between us and the nature we have fully exploited.
Let’s look for my own metaverse. The media art is based on the idea of delivery and mediation. In other words, it is the medium that connects each person, people with places, people with objects, and a world with a world. A person has only one world view given to them. It occurred to me that from the past, many people have depended on the concept of the Four Pillars of Destiny that interprets the world with the five elements—wood, fire, earth, iron, and water—in Eastern philosophy. The visual image based on nature in my work depicts many trees, forming a dense mountain range, on the large lake. A More Perfect World intends to create “a more perfect world” than the one we have now that goes beyond the actual limitations of time and space in my own beautiful nature, that is, my metaverse.