Connected Forum :
<More-than-Human>

Philosophy of Decomposition: Between Ecology and Humanities

This presentation reconsiders how we are able to explain the connection between social and ecological phenomena. On that account, I want to use a concept “decomposition (分解)”, which is generally an important term of ecology. It means that something is destroyed by natural chemical processes. Bacteria, small insects and suchlike decomposes without pause natural waste materials that are left after living organism such as “producers (生産者)” and “consumers (消費者)” have been broken up.

On the other hand, we can also easily find inside human societies “decomposers”, who destroy such detritus and wastes, and reuse them for recycling. For example, from the Edo period to the present, small farmers and lower-class people in Japan have reused such wastes as valuable things for fertilizing soil and reproduction of recycled papers. In doing so, I try to criticize a general tendency of social and natural scientists to attach weight to “production” and “consumption” to describe social and ecological phenomena.

Fujihara Tatsushi 

Tatsushi Fujihara. Associate Professor in the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University. His research interests are history of food and agriculture in the 20th Century, National Socialism and philosophy of ecology and plants. He wrote 15 books such as Philosophy of Decomposition: Thinking of Corruption and Fermentation (2019 in Japan/2022 in Korea, Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities), A Kitchen History in modern Germany (2013, KAWAI HAYAO Prize), War and Agriculture (2017 in Japan/ 2017 in Korea), A World History of Tractors (2017 in Japan/2018 in Korea). And he won JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) Prize in 2018. 

We All Share the Same Sky

Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, explains why he started the society and how it has brought together over 62,000 members in 120 different countries around a shared love clouds – the most ephemeral, evocative and dynamic of nature’s displays. The sky is a universal and easily accessible part of nature, and clouds transcend geographical, cultural and political divides. Gavin will explain how members of the Cloud Appreciation Society came together from around the world to get a new type of cloud accepted as an official classification by the World Meteorological Organisation. He will explore the role of looking up in our digital age, with the help of stunning photographs submitted by members of the Cloud Appreciation Society. Engaging with the sky is the opposite of looking down at your device. The metaphor of a cloud has aways stood for imagination and daydreaming, so why now is it now used increasingly to refer to computer storage and processing on the internet? We all share the same sky and so, despite a world of increasing division and opposition, one thing we all still agree on is the fleeting beauty of a passing cloud lit by the warm hues of a sunrise.

Gavin Pretor-Pinney 

Gavin Pretor-Pinney is founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society and bestselling author of The Cloudspotter’s Guide and The Cloud Collector’s Handbook and A Cloud A Day. Winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, he is a TED Global speaker with over 1.4 million views.

Architectural Sustainability Experimentation, Architectural Practices for the Environment

In the age of climate crisis, the aim here is to offer new perspectives on the relationship between humans, the environment, and technology by sharing various collaborative efforts. These endeavors span across multiple disciplines such as architecture, landscaping, geography, art, and engineering and seek to reorganize the relationship between architecture and the environment (e.g., Project ‘Cheop Cheop San Jung (In the Midst of Mountains and Valleys)’).

Contrary to the conventional notion that architecture is static and unchanging, it is constantly evolving through various interactions. It is constructed through the movement of materials worldwide and gradually weathers away through erosion. In the presentation, the utilization of technology to intervene in the complex network unfolding throughout the entire lifespan of this 'moving architecture' will also be introduced (e.g., project ‘The Soft Projection’).

Namjoo Kim

Namjoo Kim is an architect, researcher, and educator who currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Seoul. Kim received a Bachelor of Architecture from Korea University and a Master of Architecture from MIT. Kim was an associate at Höweler + Yoon Architecture, where she led a range of award-winning projects. In 2018, she founded studio DOHGAM, a design research studio dedicated to exploring the intersections of environment, technology, and architecture. Kim is a registered architect in Massachusetts, USA. 

Soyo Lee

Soyo Lee is an artist who explores the cultural conventions of transforming living organisms into visual information and artistic creations. She earned her doctoral degree in interdisciplinary art-science studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the United States. During her academic years, she worked as a histology technician for six years in a biophysics research lab that utilized the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) as a model organism. Her experiences included cultivating and sacrificing organisms as part of the routine to obtain data. 

Cyborgs, Dogs and Feminism

Femininity is neither biologically fixed nor in need of cultural shaping material. Donna Haraway, while reimagining the cyborg figure as a product of male-centric technoscience, demonstrates that even the material female body has been historically constituted. The cyborg is a hybrid figure that reveals the irony of various binaries like female/male, nature/culture, animal/human, organic/mechanical, and serves as an image of women in the age of information technology. The cyborg simultaneously celebrates the joy of boundary transgression and asserts accountability for those boundaries.

However, in the new millennium, Haraway shifts from the cyborg to the dog in feminist research because the dog offers a more promising figure. Dogs, like cyborgs, question boundaries, but there's more to it. Just as women have been partners in the problematic history of human evolution, dogs have been partners in human history since the dawn of Homo sapiens. Haraway narrates the co-constitutive history of dogs and humans, emphasizing that discussing a co-constitutive history is not an attempt to exonerate the history of domination and exploitation but rather an effort to create a common future that significant others must coexist in. This is why feminism discusses dogs through the lens of the cyborg.

Yumi Choi

Obtaining a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physical Chemistry from KAIST's Department of Chemistry, she participated in software development projects at an IT company. She is currently immersed in the study and teaching of philosophy, science studies, and feminism within the knowledge community 'Beyond the Breast 104.' Authored works include Haraway, Thought of Commonality, co-authorship on Hylomorphism and Art, and translations of Haraway's Staying with the Trouble and When Species Meet. 

Towards Symbiotic Futures

Through artistic research recently focused in Northern Europe I have been exploring climate change impacts through a conceptual and practical engagement with light. Working with artist and collaborator Tina O’Connell (Ireland), we are addressing how the human condition has evolved a visual dependency that is also a sensory limitation, blinding us to landscapes we inhabit with others whose worlds are saturated by anthropogenic noise; human made pollution such as artificial light in urban landscapes, infrasonic pollution in oceans and aquatic systems, molecular toxins and chemicals in soils etc. In particular, we are exploring the visual in relation to artificial light and begun to explore cultural attitudes and situated knowledge in relation to recent scientific evidence that link catastrophic declines of insect populations in Northern Europe to new forms of low energy lighting. In this respect, our research situates multisensory organisms such as moths and bats, in relation to nocturnal worlds and multispecies futures. 

The talk will draw on a visual essay being published in the Journal of Cultural Politics (Spring 2024) that explores how our insights shift interest away from what has been termed operational images (Parikka, Farocki, Steyerl) associated with visualising global patterns and systems of climate, towards a more embodied vision that situates knowledge in an ecological context (Harraway). Seen in relation to Ecological Futurisms, a collective of staff and graduate researchers based at CREAM, and using the event; The Soil Assembly (www.soilassembly.net) an event that took place at the Kochi Biennale in India in February 2023), to illustrate key themes, we will ask; How might we work in conjunction with more-than-human life to become artistic and cultural activists? In working with ecologists, scientists and educators, how can we form alternative global networks that learn from situated trans-local practices to enact visions for productive symbiotic futures?

Neal White

Neal White is a visual artist, academic and curator from London. Working in the margins between disciplines and media, his art practice is underpinned by investigations that are rigorous and experimental – frequently connecting complex threads between social, political and techno-scientific modes and fields of inquiry.  In addition to projects with Tina O’Connell - he founded the Office of Experiments (2004). His exhibitions include; Central Pavilion of Giardini; Venice Biennale of Architecture with Monsoon Assemblages (2021), Kunsthalle, Trondheim with Deep Field Projects (2020), Into The Great Wide Open – Arts and Music Festival, Vlieland, Holland (2019), Henry Moore Institute (2016/05), Portikus, Frankfurt (2015), Whitechapel Gallery (2015) and a series of projects with Arts Catalyst, between 2001-18. He co-Directs CREAM, a prestigious research centre at University of Westminster where he is a founding member of the collective Ecological Futurisms. https://www.nealwhite.org/

How to See Invisible Sculptures

"Invisible Sculptures (2018-2021)”, which are made of sound, warmth, air, smell, and thoughts and must integrate senses other than sight, "Two Subtle Bodies (2022)", which convert the energy emitted by the human body and the space between people into sound and vibration, and "Fragile Landscapes (2022~)", which reproduces the disappearing forest as an interactive sound space. Artist Song Ye-seul has created an interactive experience created by a new sensory language, proposed an invisible non-visual spectrum as an artistic material, and expanded the world of convergence technology art dominated by splendor and visual paradigms. It looks into the field of inclusive art and education practice that asks questions about prejudice against the body, perception, and social conditions of art enjoyers.

Yeseul Song
Yeseul Song is a South Korean-born, NYC-based artist who uses technology, interaction, and participation as art media to uncover creative possibilities of non-visual senses and creates new sensory languages. With the belief that art needs to be accessible to everyone, she explores and occupies non-traditional public spaces as well as public institutions to challenge commonly held ideas about access and accessibility of art. She’s best known for Invisible Sculptures (2018-2021), a series of non-visual experiential sculptures made of sound, warmth, air, smell, and thought.

Yeseul is an Assistant Arts Professor at New York University Tisch's Interactive Telecommunications Program & Interactive Media Arts (NYU ITP/IMA). Her teaching areas span physical computing and interactive art.

Her non-visual experiences has activated indoor and outdoor spaces, including Clayarch Art Museum (South Korea), Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum (D.C.), New York Live Arts (NY), PASEO (NM), Samsung Leeum Museum of Art (South Korea), and Art in Odd Places (NY). Her work has been supported by Museum of Arts and Design, Mana Contemporary, More Art, Future Imagination Fund, and Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, Embassy of the Republic of Korea's Korean Cultural Center, and more.

https://yeseul.com/ | https://instagram.com/yeseulsong

Hwayong Kim

Hwayong Kim is an artist that poses questions about identities, boundaries and classes created by stereotypes, customs, ideologies, normalization, anthropocentrism, empire and capital (region)-centered thinking and has asked questions that challenge and disrupt the solid boundaries and classes created by them. Kim has attempted performative and practical works to visualize and connect minorities, others and otherness, and non-human animals through various projects such as collaboration, encounters, travel, workshops, performances, and activism.

She was a founder and member of the Okin Collective, which explores the relationship and coexistence between society and art, and curated the exhibition ‘When the Body Becomes Manifesto’(2021) and the public art project ‘Zero Makes Zero’(2020-21). She is expanding her practice to trace the intersectionality of the way humans treat non-human animals and the way institutionalized society treats disability with ‘Where Have All the Birds that Lived in the House Gone?’(2020-), and is currently working on a research-based work, 'There's Salty Water on Mars,' which uses 'salt' as a narrative medium to connect creatures living in a liminal zone that is neither land nor sea, the territorial development and labor issues that have taken place there, and the space industry as a site of hegemonic competition.

Machines as Icebreakers Exploring the Latent Spaces of Art

Through some examples of collaboration with artificial intelligence, this presentation analyzes the operational principles and language generation process of the giant language model, while examining its potential applications and constraints related to its 'hallucinations' and 'overstatements'. Microsoft's GPT-4, unveiled on March 15th, demonstrates significant improvements in functionality and performance, facilitating smoother communication with reality. To enable the large language model to explore the uncharted territories of language, and to uncover new insights and possibilities, the presentation will propose a close coexistence with machines and various experiments.

Youngjin Oh
Since 2015, Youngjin Oh has been involved in developing the course 'Software and Humanistic Criticism' at Hanyang University's ERICA campus and has been an organizer of 'Machine Criticism.' His research focuses on the aesthetics and politics of digital culture, particularly as represented in computer games, webcomics, and social networks.

He is a co-developer of the web-responsive interactive story Under the Sunshine(2018), which is based on the experiences of Syrian refugees. He has also directed projects like Erangel: Dark Tour(2021), an immersive tour of tragic events in a virtual world, and metaverse events connected to the academic conference, ‘Science Fiction and Phenomenological Aesthetics,’ including Endless Voyage(2021) and AI Horror Radio Show(2022). He directed ChatGPT WAR Part 1 in 2023.

Coevolution of Human and Machine

Bruce Mazlish asserted in his book, The Fourth Discontinuity, that humans are no longer just masters of the machines they create but rather coevolving entities. Our created artificial intelligence is increasingly interacting with humans and expanding its capabilities based on big data. We strive to create beings resembling us and imbue them with 'vitality.' Machines, too, are constantly coevolving with humans through the advancement of computing and manufacturing technologies. As science and technology progress, we are compelled to reconsider our predefined notions of the definition of life.

Jinah Roh contemplates the notion of 'anthropomorphism,' wherein machines fashioned in the human form are coerced into a human-like existence from the moment they open their eyes. Noh sets them up in her works as beings who have a desire to become human despite the fact that there is no way they would ever want to, and expresses their instinct for humanization which serves as the reason for their existence. This artistic expression becomes a question about the dichotomous definition of humans and machines, leading to inquiries about the data, systems, and society that surround us.

Jinah Roh
Jinah Roh studied fine arts at Seoul National University and earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and PhD in Art & Technology from Sogang University. She is currently an assistant professor at Kyunghee University. Since 2002, she has been working on interactive humanoid robots and real time interactive art works which combine traditional sculpture and new media that interact with audiences. Roh has been interested in humans and nonhumans that have been redefined throughout the development of technological civilization. She translates the technological and philosophical implications of this relationship into a dialog which poses questions about the life of human and machine. Recently, She has been developing works that create emotional machines and its interface. In this context, she has made emotional robots that can communicate with humans and convey emotion in a more natural fashion using expressions and gestures obtained by deep learning. Her works have been exhibited in major museums including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul Museum of Art and Nam June Paik Art Center.

Artificial Nature: Art of Artificial Ecosystems through Computational Machines

Humans have always looked to nature for inspiration. As artists, we have done so in creating a family of “artificial natures”: interactive art installations surrounding humans with biologically-inspired complex systems experienced in immersive mixed reality. 

Life and non-life share the same materials but present distinct qualities. Making an art of artificial ecosystems is a complex task. The talk will share the making process, cybernetic principles, and how this leads to new understanding about the ecosystem we live in, the contemporary condition, as well as an awareness of reality as the conjunction of the known and the unknown. 

Haru Ji
Haru Ji is an artist and founder of the art research project “Artificial Nature”. It is an art of artificial ecosystems as shared realities, to shatter the perspective of humans as the center of the world, and deepen our understanding of the complex intertwined connections in dynamic living worlds. www.artificialnature.net 

Jaesik Kwak

Jaesik Kwak holds a doctorate in engineering and currently serves as a professor in the Department of Environmental and Safety Engineering at Korea Soongsil Cyber University, where he teaches students. Since the adaptation of his short story Aria of Rabbit into a television show on MBC TV in 2006, he has been consistently active as a writer. His written works include novels such as 233 Whales, The Greatest Gamble on Earth, Strange Dragon Hand Stories, A Planet of Bread-loving Villains, and books for writers like How to Write Somehow for Those Who Always Stop Writing Only the Beginning, Korean Monster Encyclopedia, introducing traditional Korean monsters and science non-fiction works like Kwak Jaesik's Bacterial Exhibition and Chemist Ghostbusters.

He is also active in mainstream media, appearing on programs such as EBS's Personal History Meeting and SBS's Kim Young-chul's Power FM.