The 2023 Gwangju Media Art Festival in Korea celebrated its 12th anniversary this year. As part of its exhibition, four HfG students, supported and supervised by Professor Diana McCarthy, were able to show their work at the festival’s art exhibition.

Hoin Ji: How to Make PEBM

A pseudo-instructional Audiovisual work about how Hoin Ji who has a painter's background approaches sound as a medium and direct-interpretation from painting history into sound.

Lina Determann/Jette Schwabe: IGo - A homage to the hydrofeminisum and lighthouses

A film by Lina Determann and Jette Schwabe Water is the fundamental commonality between all bodies on this planet. […] Recognizing that the permanently circulating element flowing through our and other bodies has existed in constant transformation for billions of years, abstracts water into a timeless hyper-datastore – turning all its carriers into queer actors in a universal archive.

Yun-Wen Liu: Natural View I+II

“There are several fruits and veggies shops around the town, where one can find products, in comparison to supermarkets, with better quality–even though more pricey–and more convenient, in comparison to traditional markets opening only in the morning. It was this specific shop located between the cafe I worked for and my place, which chose green grass as their decoration. More specifically, it was an artificial lawn that covered every part of its walls, inside and out. That fresh green stays bright day in and day out, without the owners paying extra effort to maintain it. A certain connection between the shop's decoration and its products emerged. Months later, I noticed a bubble tea shop in the city center installing a wall of flowers on the side wall outside of its order counter: roses with various pink on top of leaves in dark green, which never wither and stay forever blossoming. A couple of houses next to the shop, a cafe of an international chain promotes its coffee with fair trade and sustainable farming. To stress its focus, an image of a man in darker skin color, with a rather oversized shirt seemingly because of the heat, smiling at the camera while supposedly picking up coffee beans. A certain obsession of the idea of nature, I find, intertwining with various intentions, has revealed itself in different outset.”

Gwangju Medienkunst-Festival

Above all, the 2023 Gwangju Media Art Festival explores the organic “human-tohuman” and “human-to-nature’s creatures” relationships from the perspectives of society, culture, biotechnology, AI, industry, and religion, via four special exhibitions under the topic of “Breathing Light?” The festival provided an opportunity to naturally experience the flow of global media arts.