Jang-Won Lee

As a media artist, sculptor and computer engineer, Jang-Won Lee has been exploring and bridging the gap between low-tech materiality and computer technologies. Trained in traditional sculpture making, Lee works with both hardware and software and finds a new way to revive them, which often fall into fast-tracked obsolescence. His interests lie in re-working with computers and machines in a way of humanizing technology. The machines that breathe in nature and the computer that has humane quality often got tangled into dialogue with the audience.

Born in Seoul, Korea, Lee had two solo exhibitions: ´encoding/decoding´ (2004) and ´protocol´ (2005). He also worked as computer engineer and researcher at Younglin Instrument R&D Center and led a collaborative art project with the scientists at KIST (Korea Institute of Science and Technology). Currently taking residency in Goyang Art Studio run by National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, Lee is continuing his long-term project sunTracer.

sunTracer is a long-term, ongoing project spanning a time of more than a decade. To be installed across continents and oceans, sunTracer chases and captures the movement of Sun for 24 hours, and to be more accurate, it chases the altitude and azimuth of the movements of the Sun calculated through GPS coordinates of a given location. The realtime images of different sites are transmitted via network to show human symbol of longevity and power – Sun – but also to depict historical, cultural, seasonal, and even artificial landscape of the location. A multi-channelled view centered around the icon of nature tellingly conveys the diversities of human activities. This new landscape, which is simultaneously the same and different, is a portrait of eternity and transience.

Jan-Won Lee´s residency is organised within a pilot residency exchange programme between HIAP and IASK – National Art Studio, South Korea, supported by Kordelin Foundation.