Inspiration

Unfolding Light(Hyunseo, 炫抒) is the final submission work for the Finding X Project of the Humanities & Creativity subject in the second semester of 2019.

My X is my younger brother, Hyunseo Lee. I live alone in Seoul, and the last time I went home to make kimchi, something happened that led me to choose my younger brother as X. Everyone was tired of preparing kimchi, so we decided to have a quick breakfast and ordered Subway. My brother was picky when it comes to vegetables, so I asked subway staff to take out the bell peppers and pickles. But when I brought this home, my brother didn't eat it because there were olives in sandwhich. It's just a sandwich, but I couldn't get rid of the idea that I didn't really know anything about my brother.

Since the day my brother was born, we lived together for almost 13 years. And the fact that I don't know my brother like this gave me a sense of despair. Naturally, I wanted to create a work about my younger brother in this project where I had to uncover and find unfamiliar aspects of something. But if I were to make a documentary video that just gave me information about my brother, I would have no choice but to make an incomplete video even if I gave him 150 minutes. I thought this limitation could be an interesting factor in my work if I could implement a way to overcome the insufficiency of my narrative by using the time limit given in classes.

Because the letter Hyun in our name includes the concept of "light", I came up with the idea of a player app which selectively shows 1-9 chapters using QWE, ASD, and ZXC keys on the keyboard. Visitors can create a playlist in which the length of it cannot exceed 11 minutes and 30 seconds (my brother’s birthday is 040113). And since each player will have different playlist, this process resembles the fact no matter how much you love or care about someone, you cannot completely know about that someone when it comes to such small things.

It would be great if visitors could choose their own answer to the question "Do you know X? Even though the time you spend with them, are you sure? What is X like? What does X like? - Can you expand X with others?" This semester, I felt that no matter how hard I interact with others, there are limitations in getting to know others. Through the process of choosing between my brother and me swimming through time and listening to our honest stories over the phone, I hope that the imperfections of this relationship can be attributed to all humans.