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Question:
How can interactive media cause the audience to have a transformative experience?
Title: WALK Description:
I had a chance to participate in a Buddhist ritual in a Korean temple when I wastired and confused with the mundane troubles. I performed the Korean prostrationaction following the monks' Yeombul(Korean Buddhist Mantra) for about an hour.In the process of giving myself into the rhythm of movement and sound of the ritual,I could forget myself for a while. It was a experience in which I could be detachedfrom what I was doing. Repeating the action and falling into the concentration might have caused some change to my energy pattern. I realized it was a transformativeexperience for me to have rest and get healed. After the ritual in the temple, I couldhave a different insight about my situation and got more comfortable.What I want to create through my work is an alternative experience of thetransformation that can be performed through interactive media in a gallery space.About two centuries ago, religion was the most important theme in art world. But today it is just a part in the diverse playgrounds of modern art. But I believe the auraof the modern museums and galleries themselves have great religious potential,separated from our ordinary life. We still need such a place where we cancontemplate our lives for a while in a different dimension. So I would like to use thealternative space of galleries and museums for meditation and confession. Forpeople to whom religion is too heavy but with the necessity of spirituality, I think playing with interactive art work in which religious symbols are employed cansuggest the opportunity to detach from the daily life for a while and look back it from a different perspective.
 
Methodology:
Digitally generated random patterns of the projected Mandala from the ceiling issuggested as an object of concentration. The audience is lead to step on the sensorsin a circle on the floor, and it triggers the generation of Mandala pattern. The bellsound implies the rhythm of the movement of the audience. If the audience movesfaster than the rhythm, the Mandala pattern disappears. One circumambulatingaction functions as a prostrating action in the Buddhist tradition. If a cycle of circumambulation is accomplished, the cycle of generating Mandala is also done andthe pattern disppaers. And if new cycle of circumambulation begins, the mandalapattern begins to be generated as well. To fall into a deep mediation , the audience issupposed to execute the cycle at least 108 times. The ideal number of action is 1080.digitized Mandala pattern
Historical Context:
I researched a few artists who deal with spirituality as a main theme incontemporary context.
Ernesto Pujol 
 
Pujol is an artist who pursues the hybird of spirituality and art in his work andlife. He was once a Catholic monk before becoming a visual artist. Later he convertedfrom Catholicism to Buddhism. As a part of 
Walk 
(#1 in 2006) in which aperformative walk through a historical landscape is done, Pujol performs walking incircles for about thirty minutes in the garden of McNay Museum of Art. Pujolexplains that "the tradition of meditative and prayerful walks is common to manyancient world faiths, such as Western and Orthodox Christianity, Hinduism, andBuddhism".
In
Grass Circle
(2009) Pujol and other 23 artists walked backwardforming many circles during 24 early mornings. Pujol explains the piece wasbased on the tradition of walking meditation in Zen Buddhism.Walk(#1in 2006)
Kimsooja
Kim believes sewing(or art making) can be an activity that connects herself to theenergy of the world, great whole. She suggests her performance as a meditation forherself and the audience. In
 A Needle Woman
(1999) , Kim lies on a rock watchingher breathing carefully. At first , she feel pain, but after keeping the stillness forquite a long time, she finds strange peace inside and feels as if she is one with thenature. Kim defines such a transcendent state as an experience of abandoning ego.She descibes a similar awakening in her other work ,
 A Laundry Woman
(2000), Kimasks questions looking at the flow of the river, " Is it the river that is moving, ormyself?" The performance becomes finally an important awakening about thechange of body and death
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