Seoul & Melbourne 360VR Project
2017, Seoul, 360 Montage
by Wonseok Choi and Sojung Bahng
In South Korea, 2017 is a historically significant year. The previous president Park was impeached after the peaceful candle demonstration, and the new president Moon was elected. During that time, the chaotic conflicts between various political, social and cultural groups were largeand complex. Nevertheless, people lived their daily livesin various ways, as usual.
This is the ethnographic 360-degree video archive of the lives in Seoul in 2017. The non-linear and non-logical juxtaposition of the 360-degree montage of Seoul amplifies the paradoxical sensation of its complex lives. The collisions between contrasting images such as day and night, fancy and poor, young and old, busy and quiet, etc., create the dialectic feelings of unstructured, traumatic and changing Korean society. Contrary to a touristic video of Seoul, we tried to capture the realistic and unfiltered moments of the historical but daily lives in Seoul.
Floating Walk - Gangnam Kangaroo
Director: Sojung Bahng / Assistant director: Sunny Jeon / Artistic director: Rooni Lee / Composer: RIMI / Sound advisor: Patrick Hutchings / Supported by Sensilab and Artengine
Floating Walk – Gangnam Kagaroo is a 360° essay film of a young Korean woman living in Australia. In this work, we try to explore the relationship between fragmented self-identity and societies through the story of Korean women living in Australia, through the personal history. we reveal the difficulty of protecting and searching our own identity in oppressive societies. At the same time, we show the beauty and value of having awareness of identity as a shifting, dynamic construct and the pursuit of self-growth. Using the medium of VR, we invite audiences to participate in exploring virtual and floating identities. In VR, audience can embody the spaces of two different countries, but they are positioned as floating selves in the physical space and the virtual space. Due to the duality of presence that they present, they physically empathize with the process of questioning identity. Audiences are asked to critically examine their own identity while they are in the virtual world.
On the Wall
Director: Sojung Bahng, Indae Hwang / Composer: Patrick Hutchings / Camera, editing: Sojung Bahng / Generative art: Indae Hwang / Synthesizers: Patrick Hutchings / Vocal: Woo Jean / Guitar: Jongbin Lee
This is a 360˚ music video of “On the Wall” by Patrick Hutchings. It shows the night views of Seoul and Melbourne and abstract dream-like experience such as walking on surreal urban landscape at night.
