fireflies and waterfalls

This clip is of a 2003 piece called “Rhapsody In Seoul” that the late Paik Nam June did. It’s displayed at the Seoul Museum. Paik Nam June, who passed away this past February, was one of the world’s pioneers of video art. He was part of a collective in the early 1960s that also had his friend Yoko Ono as a member. He performed with John Cage amongst others.
Here’s a link to an article, which lists several of the places where his works can be seen in Korea:

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/culture/200602/kt2006020520262711700.htm

I posted a clip a few weeks ago of lanterns around Korea in advance of Buddha’s birthday. Well, this past Friday, May 5th, was Buddha’s birthday. I found myself at a temple called Shilsangsa in Jirisan National Park, one of South Korea’s most beautiful areas. The lanterns were everywhere as this clip shows. They were particularly cool, because they all used real candles, so you could get a real sense of the flickering, and even one or two lanterns caught fire, probably cause it was a windy night. I’ve seen the lanterns several times, but I never thought about what happens to them after Buddha’s birthday. At this temple, late in the evening at the end of the birthday, the visitors and the monks took down all the lanterns and one by one ripped the paper off, and broke apart the metal frames. It took several hours for 40+ people to dismantle all the lanterns.

North Korea Projections

coming soon

Very fresh public toilet. Insert 100 won (about 10 cents). The space capsule toilet. Prepare to be launched into space, fueled by your own dung. Notice the LED display where you wash your hands. Notice the shower-head equipment near the toilet, in case you want to hose yourself off rather than the conventional wipe, or else you could hose down the seat before seokang in fresh.

I just can’t get enough of these sun through the leaves on a windy day kind of shots. I literally have hours of film just like this. This shot was taken with the video function of my Olympus digicam. It’s funny how it makes everything look faded and purple, like some faulty film stock of a 16 mm camera. I like the look of it, but it looks pretty junky once it blows up to a bigger size.

I’m working on a moving-logo type-of-thing for “One Person Big Sky,” which is the name of a visual text I’m working on. The name is a mini-Chinese character lesson in itself. The character for one is 一. The character for person is 人. The character for big is 大. The character for sky is 天. Spelled out together it looks like this 一人大天, each character building on the previous one with just one new stroke of the brush. People tend to think of haikus when considering brief poems; however, before there were haikus, the Chinese were making just 3 or 4 character poems. This is one such poem.

Buddha’s birthday has come around again. If you’re living in Seoul, look around the city for the lanterns. Buddha’s birthday is being celebrated May 5th this year. The lantern parade will be in the evening on April 29th. Check it out at Jongno.
This footage comes from the park in front of Donguk University. I filmed it last year, when I stumbled upon it walking through the city late at night, on my way home from the bars.
I feel sad reflecting that was already a year ago. I miss my friends from that time, who are gone now. I miss the apartment where I lived then. I regret that a year has gone by and I still have not had time to edit all the video I took then.

The movement of plastic objects in water never ceases to fascinate. There is one green bottle, and the other four red-and-blue cans are mini-propane cans which people put into portable cookers. Obviously, these are the refuse of someone’s picnic. I don’t want to contemplate how/why anyone would throw these things in the water. Well, I should confess that last year I threw a beer bottle into the Han River.
By the way, what do you call this part of the river, where artificially the city has manipulated the level of the water, as in this case?