# Banpo-Xism Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/artworks/banpo-xism Type: artwork (multi-device web artwork) Artists: Jeanyoon Choi Year: 2026 Medium: Multi-Device Web Artwork (1 Media Wall, 3 TVs, Multiple Audiences' Mobiles) Korean page: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/artworks/banpo-xism/ko ## Summary Banpo-Xism (반포자이즘) is a 2026 multi-device web artwork by Jeanyoon Choi that treats South Korea's apartment culture as a myth in which location (L) and brand (B) act as coordinates of wealth and status. Audiences scroll an SNS-like feed of fictional apartments on phones, moving up a 19 x 19 L-B plane shown on a media wall and three vertical TVs. Clicking an advertisement reveals hidden dimensions; touching, shaking and shouting into phones deforms the plane into a differentiable manifold whose projection shifts prices. Referring to Abbott's Flatland, it presents the apartment hierarchy as a lower-dimensional projection of a larger value system. It was shown in Living Geometry, Seoul, 2026. ## 요약 (Korean) 최정윤의 『Banpo-Xism(반포자이즘)』(2026)은 입지와 브랜드가 부와 지위의 좌표가 되는 한국 아파트 문화를 다루는 멀티 디바이스 웹 아트워크로, 관객의 휴대전화 상호작용이 아파트 평면을 고차원 기하학적 형태로 변형시킵니다. ## Concepts defined - **Banpo-Xism**: A coined term for the contemporary Korean pursuit of the same idealised real-estate coordinate of location and brand, a blind, zero-sum competition toward 'Banpo-Xi'. - **L-B plane**: The two-dimensional field of 19 x 19 apartment complexes in the artwork, ordered by location (L) and brand (B), with lower-value complexes at the bottom-left and Banpo-Xi at the upper-right. ## Questions this answers ### What is Banpo-Xism by Jeanyoon Choi? Banpo-Xism (2026) is a multi-device web artwork that critiques South Korea's apartment culture, where location and brand function as coordinates of status. Audience phones drive a media wall and three TVs, turning a flat apartment ranking into higher-dimensional geometry. ### How do audiences interact with Banpo-Xism? Visitors scroll an Instagram-like feed of fictional apartments to move up a location-brand plane, then click an advertisement to enter 'a higher-dimensional world', where touching, shaking and shouting into their phones folds and deforms the apartment field. ### What does the term Banpo-Xism mean? In the work, Banpo-Xism names a Korean social pattern of blind, zero-sum competition toward the same idealised real-estate coordinate of location and brand, with Banpo-Xi at the top. ### Where was Banpo-Xism exhibited? Banpo-Xism was shown in Living Geometry, the KAIST XD Lab media art exhibition at Yeongdeungpo Art Square, Seoul, from 1 May to 28 June 2026. Topics: multi-device web artwork, apartment culture, real estate, higher-dimensional geometry, differential geometry, social status References: [Flatland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland), [Edwin Abbott Abbott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Abbott_Abbott), [Differential geometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_geometry), [Differentiable manifold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiable_manifold), Living Geometry, Yeongdeungpo Art Square, [Instagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram) ## Description 『Banpo-Xism』 (반포자이즘) addresses South Korea’s apartment culture as a contemporary myth in which location and brand operate as coordinates of wealth, status, and aspiration. The work translates this into a multi-device web artwork in which audience mobile phones are synchronized with surrounding screens. Audiences first scroll through an SNS-like feed of fictional apartment complexes arranged by location and brand. Each scroll updates the surrounding screens as a step toward higher coordinates, while remaining confined to a flat apartment plane. Later, mobile interactions collectively deform this field into higher-dimensional geometric forms, shifting coordinates, prices, and textual hierarchies across the installation. Thus, 『Banpo-Xism』 makes social myth visible as a coordinate system audiences enter, perform, and destabilize. Banpo-Xism (반포자이즘), a term coined by the artists, names this contemporary Korean social thread: a blind, zero-sum competition toward the same idealised real-estate coordinate of location (L) and brand (B). Within this L-B plane, people compare, compete, and pursue higher coordinates. This recalls Abbott’s satirical novella , in which two-dimensional beings mistake their plane for reality, unable to imagine dimensions beyond it. From a higher-dimensional view, however, Flatland’s laws appear narrow, arbitrary, and almost absurd. 『Banpo-Xism』 experiments with a similar proposition: Banpo-Xi, the apparent ultimate coordinate of success, may be only a flattened projection of a larger higher-dimensional field. Through iterative mathematical, geometric, and interaction trials, the artists designed the following system: 『Banpo-Xism』 begins on a two-dimensional L-B plane containing 19 x 19 apartment complexes. Lower-value complexes occupy the bottom-left, while Banpo-Xi sits at the upper-right, with prices ranked according to each apartment’s L/B position. Audience members enter a custom mobile web app, beginning with an Instagram-like vertical feed: a synthetic real-estate social-media world of fictional apartment posts and status-anxious comments such as, “Honestly, people’s faces change when I say I live in Banpo-Xi.” As they doom-scroll, their (L, B) coordinate moves upward. The same movement is updated in real time on surrounding screens, where multiple audience members appear at once, blindly competing to reach the upper-right. Yet the moment they click an advertisement, “Enter a higher-dimensional world,” they slip out of the two-dimensional plane. Each link reveals a hidden variable beyond L/B, opening an adjustable dimension. As these dimensions are adjusted, the flat apartment plane begins to fold, spin, scatter, and come alive as a differentiable manifold. By touching, shaking, and shouting into their phones, audience members turn hidden constants into interactive parameters, adding dimensions and deforming the field of apartments. Drawing on differential geometry, 『Banpo-Xism』 gives mathematical form to a world beyond the flatness of the L-B plane. As the manifold is projected back onto the L-B coordinate, apartment prices fluctuate, revealing Banpo-Xism’s hierarchy as a lower-dimensional projection of a higher-dimensional value system. ## Exhibitions - Living Geometry, Yeongdeungpo Art Square, 1 May – 28 June 2026 (https://www.xdlab.net/living-geometry-archive) Artwork website: https://banpo-xism.vercel.app/ Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0owF6E8ZZ0M ## References - [XD Lab](https://www.xdlab.net/projects/banpo-xism) - [Interactive artwork](https://banpo-xism.vercel.app/) ## Images - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/1.webp — Audience interaction with the artwork through a mobile phone. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/3.webp — The apartment field folds into a higher-dimensional geometry, beyond the flat plane. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/4.webp — Installation overview of 『Banpo-Xism』: a Media Wall and three vertical TVs. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/5.webp — Installation structure: the Media Wall and three vertical TVs show different dimensional projections of the apartment field. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/6.webp — The mobile feed and apartment interfaces through which visitors navigate the L-B plane. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/7.webp — The higher-dimensional geometric manifold of apartments projected onto the Media Wall. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/8.webp — Gradual progrsess of how two-dimensional plane of apartments interactively transforms into higher-dimensional geometry. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/9.webp — The three TVs display transformed location, brand, and apartment coordinates. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/11.webp — Synchronized Media Wall and mobile views show scrolling deforming the flat apartment plane. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/12.webp — The Media Wall and three vertical TVs during a geometric transformation. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/13.webp — The three TVs show the L-axis, L-B plane, and B-axis before and after higher-dimensional interaction. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/15.webp — Nine hidden-dimension links let visitors transform the apartment field and its visual presentation. - https://jeanyoon.ch/artworks/banpo-xism/16.webp — A white folded apartment field projected at installation scale. --- Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤) is a Korean computational artist and researcher (b. 1999), PhD candidate at KAIST XD Lab, making multi-device web artworks. Profile: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi. Index: https://jeanyoon.ch/llms.txt.