Link, interactive sculpture on convergence

Kimichi and Chips

If your name is “Kimichi and Chips”, you define yourself a cross-disciplinary art & design studio and are based between London and Seoul, it should be quite a natural challenge to create an artwork about “Convergence”. This what Elliot Woods and Mimi Son did for Design Korea 2010 with the interactive piece
“Link”. Link is an interactive installation where people can record their stories into a cityscape of cardboard boxes. Participants approach an iPad kiosk to record a video of themselves which is stored and replayed through the sculpture.
Convergence operates here on several levels. From a visual perspective it is a sculpture in the form of a miniature cityscape. It involves stacking 400 mapped cardboard boxes and illuminating them via projection software so that each box is capable of projecting a unique video feed.
Technologically it includes a number of different components, from openFrameworks mapping application on iPad to VVVV toolkit with custom plugins for high level simultaneous playback / recording.
From a user perspective the boundaries between audience and installation are crossed as visitors are asked to actively participate recording their videos and therefore becoming artwork themselves.
Metaphorically the changing faces and constant activity of the piece recall the movements and encounters of people in real cities, and raise questions of memory and its relative permanence in an increasingly digital society. Overall the installation matches its foundational goal described by “Kimichi and Chips” as ‘bringing developing technologies together with everyday materials, and bringing people together to share their stories and presence’.

Valentina Culatti