SHOWCASE 2019 : Playing the Future

Douglas Rushkoff's Playing the Future (1996), translated under the title Children of Chaos (Minumsa, 1997) in Korea, looks into the characteristic of the screenagers who grew up with video games and internet, and predicts the changes they will make. Biased technology, ways of recognizing the situations and environments that seem to be without rules and the era in which there are no clear distinction between subjects and objects are the landscape of the time Douglas recognized. These are not unfamiliar. The (so-called) “new” era that was seen at the end of the 20th century appears to maximize the description of the past era that it is no longer possible to distinguish the observer and the object of the observation as it is like that the observers are under a microscope.

While emphasizing that the diagnosis of a chaotic future―error, uncertainty, cult―corresponds to the older generation’s fear―coming from going against the established values such as clarity, rationality, predictability― Douglas pays attention to the kids who are “playing” in these environments rather than fearing or avoiding the uncertainty. For screenagers, the discontinuity is the only rule in the world of games. As time goes by, the jumping speed is getting faster. We turn the TV Channels and play forward 10 seconds on YouTube. This act, almost like a kind of a channel surfing, recognizes the sense of discontinuity and acquires its continuity. The communities that share a similar utilization method in terms of time, and a specific cycle focus in the present, respond to the different rhythms from everyday life.

Another name for this generation is “Chaos.” Chaos theory, which shows that there is a certain rule-order inherent in the irregularity, is close to the holistic worldview that sees things as a whole, not reductionism that sees things as the sum of its parts, in the sense that it tries to locate the sameness (or self-similarity) from the unpredictable phenomena. This is in line with the fact that Douglas specified in the preface of his book The Children of Chaos.

《Playing the Future》, the showcase under the same title, aimed to address the present and the near future the creators who are the next generation, born in 1980s to 1990s, perceives.

There are four elements in the play. They are players, mediums, rules, and transformations and interpretations. Here, the player is performing subjects and objects, and regarded as the world itself at the same time. For instance, the player “I,” composes the world with the player “you,” while being distinguished from one another. The real and virtual “devices” and “tools,” which enable it, function as mediums, also as environments. Thus, the variation of technology provides another environment and accompanies extinctions at the same time. Eight teams of creators who have experimented with the interactivity of the media with their own interpretations summons the near past and future to the present as active players, based on Korea’s digital society (aspects), egos in the digital world, considerations of technological “devices” and research on the new expression mediums beyond the 2020s.

Those are the landscapes shown by the words such as eyes of the technology, emerging egos on the borders between virtual and reality, the culture led by the death and continuation of the technology, humans and non-humans and automation technology.

The year 2020 was portrayed as a totality of future technologies in the past. “What kind of ego do we have, what kind of time, and in what kind of society do we spend.” That makes us trace back “where” we are. At the end of 2019, I hope you can “play” together and see how the landscapes of the past and future coming into contact with the present are being translated and drawn.

Seongeun Ahn (Curator, Seongbuk Museum of Art)