Since 2016, my embodied avatar performance (EAP) has explored healing rituals and life review at the intersection of arts, health and virtual reality (VR) for a variety of individuals, including older adults and cancer patients. EAP established a format in which the avatar mirrors the participant’s behaviours and speech, facing them during the life review process. The aspect of mirroring and facing is crucial in EAP for facilitating engagement, embodiment and empathy and a symbiotic relationship between avatar and human. This (...) article outlines the symbiosis between humans and avatars within the EAP process, focusing on the interactions where participants face and mirror their avatars. The avatars are presented as if participants are looking into a mirror. As the avatars face the participants and mimic their movements, they create an illusion similar to seeing one’s reflection in a virtual setting. The article discusses a range of mirroring aspects, including virtual mirrors in VR, echoing techniques in drama and movement therapy, and broader concepts like empathy, embodiment, we-ness and the Korean emotional concept of Cheong. Early EAP avatars, especially in the case of technical failures, will be discussed as examples. (shrink)

This paper intends to reveal the essential value of interactive media by fully understanding the complex interactive mechanism of human experience. Following Cartesian dualistic thought, interactive technology has primarily been utilized as a physical control device. It hasn’t sufficiently explored its gigantic potential as a true interactive medium. Interactive technology reflects our desire to interact with someone or something. Historically, human desire for interaction has been continuously manifested from the day of primitive ritual to contemporary cyberspace. Our interactive routines have (...) continued, from micro to macro scale, in order to confirm our existence in every day life. This universal repetitive pattern of human activity is ‘the ritual’. It is ritual because it is the archetypes of cycles driven by human instinct, regardless of their cultural and historical period. In this paper, I am defining ‘the form of ritual’, to explain the fundamental human process of interaction and becoming, and furthermore, to find the imperative potential of interactive media. The form of ritual will be explained in detail, with agent, driving force, process and by-product, taking reference from Korean shaman ritual, Yin/Yang process and Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy. My virtual puppetry with spiralling interaction, ‘Yong-Shin-Gud’ (calling-dragon-spirit), will be introduced as an art example to carry out the ritual. Interactive technology is an ongoing expression of human desire. Its essential value would be found in understanding human beings, nature and cosmos. Revealing its hidden essence, historical presence and spiritual value will be the next paradigm of interactive art practice. (shrink)

We live in layers of mixed realities with continuous conflicts, negotiation and becoming. I find it interesting to look at our situation as a continuous struggle in the fusion of virtual/actual presences, and machine/human. However, we seem to be far from understanding these relationships. Maybe the problem lies in the questions themselves, promoting unidirectional preconceptions. By reversing the questions, we might be able to identify something that has been missing in previous discussions: Can we talk about disconnection to further discuss (...) connection? Can we talk about distancing to further discuss the process of becoming? Can we talk about love impossible, to further discuss love? This paradoxical journey would maintain us in the continuum of struggle and massive doubts, and encounter deep aspects of human being. In this article, I examine the Korean cultural psyche called han in the context of a paradoxical state of consciousness and the story of love impossible, and argue that han is a driving force of transformative ritual in human consciousness. Beyond cultural boundaries, this article also positions han in a microscopic view of contemporary life. han underlies paradoxical human relationships with objects, and with my virtual puppets, in the context of distance, disconnection and love impossible. (shrink)