Bowon Kim

Bowon Kim has been working on a project that deals with the virtual world, learning computer languages ​​since 2018 in order to contemplate the relationship between reality with materiality and the imaginary world beyond, and to express across various materialities and spaces. The artist copies and captures reality by the single-channel video works created using Android-based VR applications and Unity modeling to imagine all possibilities that are likely to happen when virtuality infiltrates the real world through technological development.

Digital You

<YouMe Iris> AR Camera filter / <Note Me Not Me> VR Installation

<Digital You> starts from Lacan’s theory of “mirror stage.” The mirror stage, in which infants perceive the images in the mirror as identical to their actual self, is also the moment when the gaps between the actual body sensation and the images projecting it are concealed. The infant in the real world connects to the infant’s reflection in the mirror (the infant in the virtual world). In the digital age, people can easily reproduce and countlessly duplicate the images of themselves without using a camera. Our identities are also endlessly duplicated and divided accordingly in it. Within these digital media, we encounter uncanny moments in which we feel the living as the dead and the familiar feels unfamiliar all of a sudden. Bowon Kim seeks to investigate the border lines that block the process modern people use to perceive themselves in the digital virtual space and reality.