Posthuman Ensemble

Younghwan CHEON

1986/Republic of Korea

〈into the mind〉, 2021.

Mixed Media, Emotion AI, Dimensions Variable

Younghwan Cheon’s work {Emotion Vaccine Factory} reflects the artist’s interest in visualizing human emotions and how these
emotions could be shown to others. This performance uses EEGs and AI to interpret the emotions that arise when audience members see a meaningful picture and turn them into liquids and fragrances. Cheon utilizes a decoding process, where AI deconstructs formless and arcane human emotions into new forms and reorganizes them into data to create colorful representations of them. {into the mind}, the work featured in the {{Posthuman Ensemble}}, offers spectators the opportunity
to look into “emotion vaccines,” the products of the decoding process from the numerous memories and emotions of {Emotion Vaccine Factory} participants, and understand the minds of others. The combination of the human act of placing the vaccine on the measurement device and the AI’s nonhuman acts of tracking
the vaccine and showing the corresponding emotions of others forms a relationship wherein the nonhuman acts as a medium for the spectator to meet the heart of someone who does not exist in that space, creating yet another connection between the spectator and the other.