Sangwan Kim

My practice examines how digital media becomes physical through encounters with bodies, objects, and space. Working with projection, live cameras, sensors, and interactive systems, I give form to experiences that cannot be held directly: memory, grief, emotion, and human presence. I do not approach technology as a neutral tool or as a substitute for the human. Instead, I treat it as a sensitive material that can preserve, distort, and reactivate traces of lived experience. My installations create situations in which viewers do not simply observe an image but enter into a relationship with the systems, objects, and memories that produce it. <The 18th Jesa> is an interactive memorial installation dedicated to my mother, who passed away suddenly eighteen years ago. In Korean culture, Jesa is a family ritual for remembering and honoring the dead. For me, however, it is also an emotional routine: a recurring space in which memory is preserved, grief is revisited, and words that were never spoken can be silently addressed to someone who is absent. The installation occupies a dark room. A small vertical display is held inside a black wooden frame, positioned above a low altar-like table. Two LED candles, a wine glass filled with the wine my mother liked, and a 'jibang'—a paper ancestral tablet traditionally used during Jesa—form a reduced and personal memorial arrangement. Rather than reconstructing the ceremony literally, I bring traditional ritual objects into contact with a display, an IR camera, and a Raspberry Pi. Together, they form a contemporary media object that holds the unstable relationship between physical presence and remembered absence. The display initially presents a sequence of years from 2009 to 2026. Each year dissolves into particles and gradually loses clarity, marking the passage of time while suggesting the erosion of memory. When a viewer approaches, the embedded IR camera detects their presence. The image changes, and the phrase “image remains, but details blur” appears repeatedly over a live black-and-white image of the viewer’s face. Their image is never returned clearly; it becomes a softened and unstable afterimage. Through this interaction, the viewer is temporarily absorbed into the memorial. Their presence activates the work, but the same system immediately renders that presence fragile. The installation therefore moves from personal mourning toward a broader reflection on mortality: images may survive, while the people and details attached to them gradually disappear. The work does not attempt to resolve grief. Instead, it creates a space in which ritual objects, technology, and the living body can remain with absence and quietly confront the finite nature of life.

Sangwan 'Shawn' Kim is a Korean media artist, projection designer, and creative technologist based between Seoul and Los Angeles. His practice explores how light, moving images, live cameras, and interactive systems can translate invisible experiences—memory, grief, emotion, and human vitality—into shared spatial encounters. Drawing on his background in theater and performance, he creates installations and projection-based environments that place human presence at the center of technology. His work has been presented at Seoul Arts Center, the Gwangju Design Biennale, the Asia Culture Center, the Wooyang Museum of Contemporary Art, and CalArts Expo. He received a B.A. in Theatre & Film from Hanyang University and is currently pursuing an MFA in Interactive Media for Performance at California Institute of the Arts.