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I remember moments saying ‘human’ or ‘mechanical’ when referring to certain people in our everyday conversations. Amongst the two characteristics, it is rare to find people who inherently have only one aspect, whether it be human or mechanical. Artist PARK Earl summons our habitual notions and poses problems with them. Moreover, we are henceforth able to predict that he will constantly throw questions at us through his works. The existence of machines, which PARK tries to express in his work, can be described as the place where machines themselves become the subject, transcending the existence of becoming the tool when producing other media. I wish to articulate the fact that PARK’s work enable us to think indirectly about how humans have limited the characteristics of heterogeneous existences, and at the same time, how they have attempted to connect different concepts that seem irrelevant from one another, in connection with Gilbert SIMONDON (1924–1989)’s ‘indetermination.’ SIMONDON’s indetermination, in other words, can be accounted as ‘openness.’

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Machines on the verge of a nervous breakdown: Escape from Freedom, 2017-2020, 1 type of robot(custom electronics and sensors, motor, omni-wheel, LiPo battery, acrylic, brass, synthetic resin), neodymium magnet, steel frame, wood, 110×90×90cm. Machines on the verge of a nervous breakdown: Imprinting, 2017-2020, 2 types of robots (custom electronics, hacked IR camera, motor, omni-wheel, LiPo battery, acrylic, synthetic resin), wood, 10×180×180cm. Installation view of Daejeon Biennale 2020 A.I.: Sunshine Misses Windows (Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, 2020). Image provided by Incheon Art Platform.

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PARK’s most recent exhibition is the Daejeon Biennale 2020 A. I., Sunshine Misses Windows (Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, 2020). In this exhibition, he presented two works: Machines on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: Escape from Freedom (2017–2020), and Machines on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: Imprinting (2017–2020). In PARK’s works, humans and machines are not separate entities but combine naturally, permeating into one another. They were moving rather more silently than expected, even in the exhibition space. Had the conditions of a human being on the verge of a nervous breakdown to be expressed in sound, I believe it would probably be the sharp and keen ‘notes’ of ‘scraping’–the associated feelings of vigilance, defense, terror, compulsion–something, repeatedly, similar to those of PARK’s machines. I assume, in Machines on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: Imprinting, there would probably be sounds of human obsession, movements of machines, and ‘notes’ of pursuing fantasy, endlessly challenging, even though they are aware that they cannot touch each other. It made me recall a past experience.

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It was interesting beginning with the work’s title because, like how SIMONDON had discovered the true character of machines from indetermination, there are many similarities in the process that machines and humans going through of constant connection, decomposition, and convergence with one another. These similarities are evident with the point that like how human beings are born in this world, make use of their potential abilities, and develop, machines, too, evolve and become diversified, not restricted to a single function. From this aspect, the potentiality of humans and machines can be seen as an infinite arena that is both unpredictable and interesting. Looking from this point of view, humans and machines, like SIMONDON’s concept, ‘coevolve.’ They combine with one another, break up, and then, part ways, searching for another point of contact. SIMONDON referred to this phenomenon as ‘transduction.’ I am one of those people who is afraid of the technology-predominant era where the coming machines that excel might overtake humans. SIMONDON points out that the cause of such fear for humans derives from humans misunderstanding the method of existence related to technological objects as well as adopting ways of inappropriately establishing relationships with them.

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Exhibition view of Mechanics of Mythology (Window Gallery, Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, 2021). Image provided by Incheon Art Platform.

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(Left) DIY Portable Halo, 2021, Lighting lamp, harness vest, steel, synthetic resin, dimensions variable. (Right) Halo Augmenting Machine, 2021, LED, steel, aluminum, synthetic resin, fabric, 74.5×45×45cm. Image provided by Incheon Art Platform.

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PARK’s Machines on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown series, also present to us a similar question to that of the indetermination and transduction of humans and machines that SIMONDON suggested. This question is not merely on a level of comparing technology and humans, and even more so is an attitude of criticism. In comparison to PARK’s works, from the process of engineers constructing and planning blueprints to installing it on the site as they had predicted it and thus making it public, appear alike. However, at this point, what differentiates his work from the former is that it encompasses the agony of how the form and movement of the machines he had planned are going to be received by people as an image. At the same time, the artist even takes into account what people can experience as machines work. The fact that PARK plans ‘adjusting, continuously, into a design in which everything can be in motion,’ is particularly special. Even though I cannot analyze nor reinterpret the blueprints the artist had sent me, I became curious about them, these objects that were the basic stage that is the key to the progression of his working process. I could picture without difficulty PARK as if he were operating a conveyer belt, spearheading many processes based on those blueprints.

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The Walking Man, 2016 (2021 reproduction), Kinetic installation, anodized aluminum, brass, steel frame, balloon, timing belt & pulley, motor, reducer, 200×120×65cm. Image provided by Incheon Art Platform.

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The Walking Man II, 2018 (2021 production), Kinetic installation, anodized aluminum, brass, steel frame, timing belt & pulley, motor, reducer, 200×120×65cm. Image provided by Incheon Art Platform.

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Putting aside the frustration of not being able to read the blueprints, my thought was, PARK’s machines are tests for ‘evolution’, for increasing the density of communication the moment they meet with humans (it seems chances of this contact in the exhibition room are the most high). Machines can modify malfunctions or errors, but people are not beings possible for the experiment. From this aspect, machines may be living the process of coevolution more actively than humans.

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PARK’s work, that individually respects the reality owned by humans and the reality owned by machines, pays attention to the new reality that the two entities will create, thereby, suggesting a new reasoning of relationship. Like his explanation, the point where “machines determine what they will perceive and accept in this world through various sensors, and they also determine its meaning and response,” secures a persuasiveness with what SIMONDON has claimed, i.e., that machines are also human. A. I. today is susceptible to external information situations, and its functions have diversified. In addition, had we considered the evolutionary function of interaction, stage by stage, I believe that PARK’s work will form a sufficient consensus as a medium of transduction which, rather than dominating and intimidating humans, communicates with humans and re-establishes the human-human, and human-machine relationship.

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PAIK Nam June also comes to mind. PAIK, like SIMONDON, took notice of information technology and predicted that the formation of a global village would become possible with the development of the internet. He even said that he uses machines as resistance for machines. Like humans, machines and nature mediate with one another and come together to bring about beauty; I have great expectations for the moment in PARK’s new works, which develop these ideas further and for where the affective sympathy and emotion spread, that will commune with viewers, seeing them as the ‘aesthetics of ensemble’ and ‘amusement,’ going beyond the aura of humans and machines.

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Gilbert SIMONDON
Gilbert SIMONDON (1924–1989) is a philosopher who was born in Saint-Etienne. He is referred to as the founder of the ‘philosophy of machines’. He earned a doctorate at the Sorbonne University in 1958 and taught students at Sorbonne, Poitiers, University of Paris 4. His main work was his doctoral thesis “L'individuation a la lumiere des notions de Forme et d'Information” (Individuation in the light of the notions of Form and Information)(1958) and his complementary thesis, “Du mode d'existence des objets techniques” (On the mode of existence of technical objects)(1958).

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The core concept of SIMONDON’s philosophy is ‘individuation’. He completely changed the philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, and the philosophy of machines, and based on these concepts, developed his ontology. This attempt influenced numerous contemporary philosophers including Gilles DELEUZE (1925–1995) and subsequently greatly influenced the philosophy of politics of Antonio NEGRI (1933–), and the philosophy of science by theorists such as Brian MASSUMI (1956–) and Bernard STIEGLER (1952–). ¹⁾

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[Footnote]

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¹⁾ https://nomadist.tistory.com/590

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※ This content was first published in 『2020 Incheon Art Platform Residency Program Catalogue』, and re-published here with the consent of Incheon Art Platform