KYUNG
YUN
CHOI
The Stranger - .... . ... - .-. .- -. --. . .-.
Overview
Can you ever be what you say and say what you are?
Can your speech genuinely represent yourself and convey your thoughts and meaning?
Does your speech hold your thoughts and intended meaning?
Every word spoken out loud can lose its original intent and meaning once it departs from your mouth and is transferred to any media to be heard, leaving you with a sense of detachment when you hear your recorded voice.
Sometimes, I feel disconnected from myself when I hear what I have just spoken out loud.
Is that really what I wanted to say?
Is that truly what I have been thinking?
Have I ever even thought about this before?
Once your voice is out, it no longer belongs to you.
This interactive art installation creates a strange feeling as if you are speaking to yourself in a soliloquy while having the presence of an invisible entity that might be you or not. The automated typewriter recognizes your speech and translates it into Morse code, excluding the words 'I' and 'you' and those letters. It creates a new perception of distance and captures the moment of losing authority over your own thoughts.
Even if you see the typewriter transcribing what you just said with Morse code, the resulting sentences composed of dots, dashes, 'I', and 'You' on the paper seem to respond to your speech with a completely new and seemingly encrypted meaning, as if they are talking back to you. This can result in the loss of the speaker's original intention and can also represent the ephemeral aspect of either inner or outer voice.
.... . .-.. .-.. --- ... - .-. .- -. --. . .-.
Media and Communication Technology and its replacement of human hand [1]
By using a vintage typewriter as the main medium to convey my inspiration and concept, I aimed to reflect on the history of mediated communication and information transmission technology. This history begins with human hand transcription, electrical telegraphy, and the creation of Morse code as its language, and has progressed through the development of phonography, the telephone, the typewriter, the teletypewriter, and today's computer keyboard systems, as well as voice command technology for transcribing and transferring messages. Through the metaphorical representation of this evolution, I automated the vintage typewriter to transcribe speech in the historical language of Morse code, which ironically represents the current voice command technology.
Inspiration
This artwork was inspired by my own experiences, as well as one of my favorite books, 'The Stranger' by Albert Camus. The novel has had a significant impact on my thoughts regarding the relationship between myself and the world, and it accelerated the realization of my concept of losing authority over one's thoughts and self-detachment.
You may find the typestracts work by Dom Sylvester also inspiring! I got to know his work later and somehow the paper artifact with some glitches created by my automated typewriter installation reminds me of his beautiful work.
