# An Echo

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/experiments/an-echo
Type: experiment
Artist: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Year: 2022
Medium: HTML
Context: HTML

## Summary

An Echo is a 2022 interactive web artwork by Jeanyoon Choi that collages signs and icons to contrast the short-term future, placed on the left of the screen, with the long-term future on the right. It draws on references including Marcel Duchamp, Henri Bergson's inverted cone, Nietzsche's camel and child, Lee Kun-hee, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Named after the nymph Echo, who could only repeat the last words spoken to her, the work criticises the habit of projecting the recent past onto the near future instead of affirming randomness.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤의 『An Echo』(2022)는 단기적 미래와 장기적 미래를 대비시키는 인터랙티브 웹 콜라주로, 가까운 과거를 반복해 미래를 예측하려는 경향을 그리스 신화의 에코에 빗대어 비판합니다.

## Questions this answers

### What is An Echo by Jeanyoon Choi about?

An Echo (2022) is an interactive web collage that contrasts short-term and long-term futures. It criticises how people, like the nymph Echo, repeat the recent past when trying to predict an unpredictable future.

### Why is the artwork An Echo named after the Greek nymph Echo?

Echo could only repeat the last words spoken to her. Jeanyoon Choi uses her as a figure for 'future insight' that simply projects what happened in the near past into the near future.

Topics: web collage, future, uncertainty, nietzsche, interactive web art

References: [Marcel Duchamp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp), [Henri Bergson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson), [Friedrich Nietzsche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche), [Lee Kun-hee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kun-hee), [Jeff Bezos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos), [Elon Musk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk), [Echo (mythology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_(mythology))

## Description

Web Collage expressing the nonlinearlity of future

We are anxious about the future. We’d like to keep the upcoming future under our control, so we attend conferences or subscribe to magazines that present a predictable future marketed under a name of ‘future insight’, when paradoxically, the anxiousness towards the future should have been triggered by its unpredictable nature.

Influenced by Marcel Duchamp(Tu m’), Henri Bergson(Inverted Cone), Friedrich Nietzsche(The camel and the baby), Lee Kun-Hee(Change everything except Spouse and Children), Jeff Bezos(Smile) and Elon Musk(Non-linear Tesla Stock), this interactive web artwork collages numerous signs and icons to contrast the character of short-term future(situated in the left of the screen) from the long-term future(situated in the right), criticising the former and valuing the latter.

According to Greek Mythology, a nymph called Echo could only repeat the last words spoken to her due to the curse of Hera. The artwork An Echo(Not to be confused with ‘Adecco’) criticises our tendency to act like an Echo when dealing with the future, not trying to affirm the randomness and thus overcome the uncertainty in a Nietzschestic manner, but instead, trying to predict the unpredictable by repeatedly projecting what happened in the near past into a near future.

## Links

- [Watch video](https://www.youtube.com/embed/ENd5tpDO2T4)

## Images

- https://jeanyoon.ch/experiments/an-echo/1.webp — An Echo (2022), documentation image 1.
- https://jeanyoon.ch/experiments/an-echo/2.webp — An Echo (2022), documentation image 2.

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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/en. Index: https://jeanyoon.ch/llms.txt.