Come Discover the Garden of Data God!

The Science Walden Center of UNIST, in collaboration with Artist Jieun Gu exhibited an art work, along the Taehwa River in Ulsan.

The Taehwa River Eco Art Festival 2020 (TEAF20) is an event that takes place in the Taehwagang National Garden from October 15 to 25, 2020. Held under the theme of “Little Ore in the Hands,” the exhibition has been participated by 20 teams from 7 different countries.

This year’s theme is a quote from Benjamin H. Bratton, referring to platinum and coltan, which are essential building blocks of smartphones. The exhibition is an attempt to expand the meaning of technological civilization to ore (natural objects), raising new questions about the symbiosis between humans and nature in modern society.

Artist Jieun Gu, jointly with the Science Walden Center of UNIST, also participate in the exhibition, displaying a collaborative video installation, namely ‘Garden of Data God’ at the Samho District Bird Sanctuary throughout this week.

In the center of the art work contains the stories from the future 2030. That is the voice of a multi-year dataset that has been collected without the knowledge or new consent of the data subjects, and thus has become the so-called ‘Data God,’ predicting the life outcomes of the people. This art installation, in which various symbols of modern society, such as the development of human civilization, capitalism, and labor, along with the past stories of Data God are embodied as a garden, depicts the future.

“As being depicted in the artwork, AI and data will replace humans for many jobs in the future, yet even in that, we tried to capture the inner world of human beings that has not been dataized,” says Artist Jieun Gu. “This will be the first step towards establishing a circulatory system of communication via the experience of recalling values that cannot be explained by capital or an exchange of value.”

Meanwhile, the Taehwa River Eco Art Festival began in 2007 to remember the significance of the Taehwa River, which has been restored as a living ecology through long-term environmental improvement efforts, and this year marks its 14th anniversary.