Can you briefly introduce yourself?
Hi, I am artist Kim Jaeuk, and I use video media to create media art.
How did you start your career?
I actually loved movies ever since I was young.
So I majored in film in college, and now I have a Master’s degree in interactive media design.
Actually, movie production requires a lot of people, a lot of staffs’ dedication but as for media art using video media, I, the artist, plan, produce, work on post-production to hold an exhibition, and communicate with the audience all by myself as a sort of intermediate.
That’s why I started my career.
Were there any hardships during your career?
I think what I do now which is interactive media art is on the line of the commercial area and the fine art area.
So the unclear identity of my work, whether it belongs to design work or fine artwork, is the biggest hardship I have, and I am still working to find the answer.
What are your ethics when it comes to art in general, and your creations in particular?
I think it is such a shame that there is a phenomenon where art is being perceived as something too difficult or something formal and unapproachable.
In my opinion, the audience should look at the art and sort of like or adore it, and in the process, the artwork can work as a synergy that creates communication, so my general ethic is to create artwork as such.
Where do you usually get inspired?
I actually get inspired by every objets in my daily life.
It can be either someone who is the closest to me, something I feel attached to, or coincidental relationships in my daily life, and I get small inspirations from those.
In addition, for philosophical parts or conceptual parts of my work, I focus on what kind of narrative and storytelling the producers use to produce the film since I love films as I mentioned.
Can you briefly introduce the works you exhibited in BISKET?
My chief work series that was exhibited in BISKET are New Sun and Moon and Daegu Metropolitan City and New Life in Republic of Korea, which are large media façade works created in 2019 and 2020.
I created a collage using the digital media of the landmarks of Daegu, a place where my identity belongs, and I blurred the lively motion beyond the digital media or the limitation of the running time of the video to create a sort of infinite orbit with my digital landscape collage.
Furthermore, I created New Life in Republic of Korea, a work that contains landmarks of the 6 metropolitan cities and 1 capital city of Korea where my nationality is from, and it is being displayed in Incheon International Airport.
Other than that, Portrait Series is basically portraits.
In our daily lives, we call someone’s photo or drawing a portrait,
but I think Instagram has a phenomenon of people having some sort of fair in the comments and communicating with the “like” system…
So I sort of metaphorically expressed the flowers as the portraits of the square frames we can see on Instagram.
Flowers are presumed to be beautiful to everyone, so I created this work with the concept of “humans are more beautiful than flowers”.
Sun and Moon are repeatedly placed in your artwork.
My chief work series New Sun and Moon and Daegu Metropolitan City, New Life in Republic of Korea, and New Landscape of Gangwon Province with DMZ all have sun and moon on each side of the work.
As for those works, I created a homage of the traditional art such as Irwol Obongdo (日月五峰圖) and Sipjangsaengdo (十長生圖) and reinterpreted them into more modern scenery.
So the basic layout includes the sun and the moon, which are the nature of five elements of yin and yang, but also they are combined with a disco ball that glows and spreads light in the limited space and sheds light on a permanent space, which is my sequence.
Are there any role models or figures that influenced your art?
I really admire Michel Gondry, a French writer and movie producer.
He was not only a movie producer but also an experimental artist who experimented with a lot of video media like Daft Punk’s music video.
So I think Michel Gondry’s techniques, stop motion, and his various experimental tools that are created by video media are significant techniques of interactive media art, and I get hugely inspired by him and restudy his experiments.
For the local artists, of course, artist Nam June Paik is not to be missed, and artist Gi Nam Lee’s theory on how to turn media contents into an artwork.
What do you think makes your artwork special?
My artwork can be very different depending on the perspective such as macroscopic perspective and microscopic perspective.
On your phone screen, it looks like an ordinary digital landscape art, but when it is displayed on a monitor, a beam projector, or even a large outdoor billboard/LED board, you can observe every little objets’ detailed motions inside the work.
So my artwork is special in a way that in general, it looks like one solid image, but in detail, a lot of elements are combining and making a collage to create one big image, one big scene, and one big sequence.
How long does it take for you to finish your work?
Obviously, it depends on the work, but I can roughly estimate that it took me about 3 to 6 months per work when it comes to my chief work series.
Because I use all materials the video media can offer.
From still images to videos, from 2D to 3D, and even computer graphic CG, I work with everything. So it takes a lot of time to just render each element.
And when I combine the elements in one canvas (pixel), placing them, fixing the layout, and rendering the work takes a lot of physical time.
Do you create all the sources in your work?
I do create some sources like 3d graphics obviously, and I also try to use the pre-existing images as well.
I don’t try to add my narrative or reinterpret, I try to use the native sources.
What made you choose to collaborate with Bisket rather than other pre-existing NFT marketplaces?
So I look at NFT, the irreplaceable token, as a newborn system.
So I thought a fresh NFT market from a newborn company fits me and my character better rather than a fixed, settled platform,
and I think it will offer me more opportunities to experiment and challenge, so I decided to work with BISKET.
What do you expect to get out of collaboration with BISKET?
My artwork is mostly a single-channel video, which means it doesn’t exist in a person.
Because I have been working with data that don’t exist in person, I couldn’t even dream of selling them even though there were some cases of public institutes or large institutes preserving them.
But by collaborating with NFT BISKET, I think it will lead to transactions between individuals, and maybe my work wouldn’t look too formal and it will spread out like tree branches.
Q: How is your view on the prospect of the NFT art market?
NFT is a new system, as I mentioned.
I think it is acting as a great intermediate in the art market right now, and it gives artists like me who create digital work that doesn’t exist in person or the artists that are even younger than me like college students a chance to make living with their art,
And I witnessed my thoughts coming true in art fairs recently.
Can you describe yourself in one word?
Myself in a word is a re-creator.
I’m actually not a creator who creates something new.
I recreate pre-existing things like contents, sources, and landmarks with my own interpretation, so I define myself as a re-creator.
