Korean Air Box Project 2015: Julius Popp
The Korean Air Box Project series features an artist who has suggested an artistic vision for the future in the domains of international contemporary art, showcasing a large-scale, site-specific installation at Seoul Box, the most symbolic space of MMCA, Seoul.
For 2015, the next-generation media artist Julius Popp presents his latest installation work, bit.fall pulse, which is the largest piece of his signature series entitled bit.fall, previously shown at various venues throughout the world. Within each of the four large containers stacked toward the ceiling of Seoul Box, hundreds of water droplets form a word, which then disappears after a very short time. As the different words repeatedly appear and replace the previous word in a cascade form, the viewer’s curiosity is instantly stimulated.
The title bit.fall pulse implies the “falling” of “bits,” the smallest unit of information. In other words, it represents the transient nature of information, with its extremely short life span and its “pulse” as it is rapidly disseminated around the world. Connected to the Internet in real time, the work measures the frequency of words used in Internet news feeds on the basis of the statistical algorithm devised by the artist and selects “water droplet words” in accordance to their importance. These “cascades of information data,” continually falling down in high speed, are metaphoric of the ephemeral qualities of information for which validity is less than a second and mirrors today’s information-overloaded society where people are not given enough time to understand and digest. Although the work will present words that are current, the artist focuses solely on the way people and society consume information and its simultaneous modifications that take place during the process rather than the individual meaning and value of the word.
This exhibition will also feature a film that documented the whole process from conceiving the idea to modeling, fabricating, transporting, installing, and artist’s interview.
