Kimchi and Chips, Halo
(Fri.) June 11 - (Fri.) September 24, 2021
Museum Madang, MMCA, MMCA Seoul
* Halo may not work depending on the weather.
The only existing work to be presented at MMCA Performing Arts 2021: Multiverse , Halo is a work that most dramatically expresses the concept of “drawing in the air,” a key idea in the practice of Kimchi and Chips. To be installed in Museum Madang, the work visualizes the sun through machines and nature.
Ninety-nine robotic mirrors move throughout the day to follow the sun, each emitting a beam of sunlight into a cloud of water mist. The sun and 99 beams of sunlight draw a bright circle in the air, inviting the sun before our eyes. While previous works of the duo were based on meticulous calculation and perfect control, Halo manifests itself within the circulation of coincidence and inevitability through an encounter with nature, technology, and humans. Dependent entirely on the presence of the sun, wind, and the audience's patience for its completion, the work allows us to explore entities beyond our control and reach and contemplate on the role and the limitation of technology. The temporal order that governs our everyday relations to the city is disrupted by the derivation of Halo , which arrives ephemerally and unpredictably, unscheduled by the chaos of the wind and the weather and indifferent to human actions. The repetitive but never identical happenings of this nature-technology collaboration enriches our lives.
The artists collaborated with various fields for the production of Halo , including material engineering, robotics, mathematics, and astronomy. They developed an open source solar farm system based on machine learning to track the sun and to calibrate the sunlight to a single point. After two years of development and production, the work was first presented at Somerset House London in June 2018.
Artist: Kimchi and Chips
Design and Technology: Kimchi and Chips
Production: C2 Artechnolozy
Fabrication: Studio Sungshin
Producer: Lee Soyoung
Designer: Yang Yoona
Technical assistant: Na Youngil, Lee Jin
Production assistant: Kang Donghwi, Park Syemin
Co-commissioiner: Art Council Korea, Gwangju Design Biennale, Somerset House
Project supporters: Korean Culture Centre UK, ROBOTIS, Improbable Worlds Ltd UK
Image © Kimchi and Chips, Peter Macdiarmid, Hwang Piljoo
