Senior Art Exhibit 2008 - Jaeae An

As a visual artist, I tend to put emphasis on evoking a powerful experience with visual images combined with available media.

This installation piece created out of used painted cardboard boxes and video projections represent gentrification and industrialization. I want my art to be part of our urban environment, not strictly limited to upper class or fancy museum settings. This project provides an opportunity for the audience to become a part of the art by putting them into the setting, instead of being merely observers. While projected images are simplified in terms of variety, they resonate with the audience with their strong narrative content combined with industrial and ambient background sounds. The sound effects are created using radio and television static noises, walky-talky sounds, etc.; bringing familiarity to the audience. The poetry reading in English and translated into my native language, Korean, creates a bilingual environment allowing the audience to experience and relate to my world.

As a video artist, my narrative and abstract visual documentation become integrated within the installation environment, creating a fourth plane. By the use of projectors and surrounding materials, the video extends beyond the visual recognition of a singular 2D or 3D object. The piece becomes a uniform environment and seeks to create a virtual realm. This virtual realm aspires to present an environment that is rich in sensation by utilizing technology to stimulate as many as possible physical sensory aspects of the human body, including: hearing, seeing, smelling, and touching. With each of these physical qualities taken into account, my work attempts to create a uniform object, and unique experience that conveys a metaphor or message.