On the 16th of February, the students and staff of the UK Campus had the pleasure of having Dr Jinjoon Lee to talk to us on the topic of New Media Art: The future of Art and Technology. Dr Lee is a new media artist, creative director, and professor who focuses on exploring the liminoid experience of utopian space ideologies with new technologies.
After graduating from the Business School of Seoul National University in Seoul, Dr Lee went on to pursue a master degree in art at the Royal College of Art in London, and a PhD from the Ruskin School of Fine Art, at the University of Oxford. His doctoral thesis was titled Empty Garden: A Liminoid Journey to Nowhere in Somewhere (2020), addressing a new theoretical perspective on virtual and augmented reality through Asian gardens.
Currently, Dr Lee is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and a full-fledged member of the Royal Society of Sculptors (MRSS). Having previously taught at the University of Oxford, he was appointed a professor at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) and his research is on Data-driven Art and Design, Digital Architecture and XR Performance for Future Opera with new technologies like VR, AI, NFT at his TX lab. Currently he is the founding director of KAIST Art Museum.
In this seminar, Dr Lee explored the definition of new media art and new movements occurring at the forefront of contemporary art. In particular, Dr Lee examined the possibility of technological convergence in various creative industries and shared his research on sculpture and architecture, which expanded the multi-sensual experience of human visual perception into the realm of space through the convergence of art and technology.
Dr Lee exemplified his explanation by taking all of us through his own work, particularly his internationally renowned work, “They” – a permanent media sculpture at DMC, Seoul, Korea. He took the audience through the conception to execution of his stunning art piece, which was made with tempered glass, stainless steel, aluminium, and LED.
Finally, Dr Lee also discussed with the audience the latest examples of data-based art created by new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Artificial Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and the current trending topic – Non Fungible Tokens (NFT), and the future of new media art through the integration of humans, technology, and even the humanities.
It was an eye-opening experience for us all here at the UK Campus and it is with no doubt that we have learned so much about new media art – where art is not just a paining in a museum but it lives and breathes around us. We thank Dr Lee for his wonderful and illuminating seminar and hope that one day we all could travel to Seoul, Korea to see that wonderful art piece “They”.
