# Scrolling Times Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/experiments/scrolling-times Type: experiment Artist: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤) Year: 2023 Medium: HTML Context: HTML ## Summary Scrolling Times is a 2023 interactive artwork by Jeanyoon Choi built around Marshall McLuhan's remark in Understanding Media that ads are always good news balanced by bad news. Audiences scroll on their phones to drive two screens, one for news and one for advertisements, with collage imagery inspired by Instagram's grid. Each scroll pairs opposing content, such as rising real-estate prices and luxury flats, or climate change and airline ads, reconstructing the paradoxical juxtaposition of news and advertising in mobile feeds. ## 요약 (Korean) 최정윤의 『Scrolling Times』(2023)는 휴대전화 스크롤로 뉴스와 광고 화면을 번갈아 바꾸는 두 채널 작품으로, 마셜 매클루언의 광고론을 바탕으로 피드 속 뉴스와 광고의 역설적 병치를 보여 줍니다. ## Questions this answers ### What is Scrolling Times by Jeanyoon Choi? Scrolling Times (2023) is a two-screen interactive artwork in which audiences scroll on their phones to toggle between paired news and advertisement content, reflecting how feeds juxtapose bad news and good-news ads. ### How does Scrolling Times use Marshall McLuhan's ideas? It starts from McLuhan's observation in Understanding Media (1964) that ads are good news that need bad news to balance them, and translates it into the act of scrolling on mobile feeds. Topics: scrolling, news and advertising, media consumption, mobile interaction, multi-screen installation References: [Marshall McLuhan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan), [Understanding Media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media), [Instagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram), [YouTube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube) ## Description In Marshall McLuhan's words, ads are the standout feature in print media, embodying wit and art that often surpass prose. This sentiment extends to our digital age, where news and ads intertwine seamlessly on mobile screens. ‘Scrolling Times’ delves into this fusion by allowing audiences to navigate two screens with contrasting content through a single scroll. This juxtaposition mirrors our daily media consumption, where, for example, news about real estate escalation swiftly transitions to an ad for luxury flats. The piece, inspired by Instagram's grid, symbolises the complex interplay between news and ads, shedding light on the paradoxical forces underlying modern media consumption. “The ads are by far the best part of any magazine or newspaper. More pains and thought, more wit and art go into the making of an ad than into any prose feature of press or magazine. Ads are news. What is wrong with them is that they are always good news. In order to balance off the effect and to sell good news, it is necessary to have a lot of bad news.” - Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964 The same phenomenon is evident in our contemporary media culture - a complex tapestry where the bad and the good, news and advertisement, are interwoven within couple of pixels The boundaries between them are blurred. This is no longer the era of newspapers; now, our focus is on mobile phone screens, particularly the feeds on platforms like Instagram and YouTube. Wherever we venture in our digital journey, whichever news or content we engage with, advertisements invariably follow. It’s intriguing how, in response to grim news, a contrasting, upbeat advertisement often emerges. It's almost as if these positive ads are, in some way, a response to or even a catalyst for the negative news, and vice versa. In today's world, where everything is moving in its own distinct trajectory, the presence of these two opposing forces, moving in different directions, is commonplace. In this highly-segmented media landscape, for instance, we might encounter news about soaring real estate prices, immediately followed by an advertisement for the latest luxury flat development. Or news about climate change is quickly succeeded by ads promoting international air travel. As an artist, I find this juxtaposition not contradictory but rather reflective of the world we live in - a world where ecological artists take taxi to the gallery opening. This artwork, ‘Scrolling Times’, aims to reconstruct this phenomenon - the ease with which we encounter two opposing elements, news and advertisement, within the span of a single scroll. Scrolling has become a significant act in our interaction with mobile devices and is integral to Human-Computer Interaction. It’s through the seemingly unconscious act of scrolling that we are inundated with these snippets of information. ‘Scrolling Times’ is comprised of two screens. Audiences are encouraged to engage with the artwork by scrolling on their mobile device, which alternates the content displayed on each screen. The imagery is a collage of abstract elements, inspired by the grid layout of Instagram feeds. With each scroll on their device, the audience toggles between topics - one moment focusing on news-related content, the next on advertisement-specific content. For example, news about real estate may transition into an advertisement for luxury apartments, or a diamond ad may be followed by news on unemployment. Likewise, a report on climate change might lead into airline advertisements. As the audience scrolls, the two channels respond accordingly, one channel dedicated to news, the other to advertisements. This creates a layered, paradoxical narrative that links seemingly unrelated elements, like ‘Soaring Real Estate Prices’ and ‘Luxury Apartments’. This dynamic and somewhat chaotic interaction offers a commentary on the contemporary media landscape, reflecting not only the narrative and the form of interaction - scrolling - of our media consumption, characterized by scrolling, but also highlighting the underlying paradoxical and contradictory forces at play between news and advertisements. ## Links - [Visit experiment](https://internetinental.herokuapp.com/term4/scrolling-times/screen?screenIdx=0) - [Watch video](https://www.youtube.com/embed/PU9bpP51LzM) ## Images - https://jeanyoon.ch/experiments/scrolling-times/1.webp — Scrolling Times (2023), documentation image 1. - https://jeanyoon.ch/experiments/scrolling-times/2.webp — Scrolling Times (2023), documentation image 2. - https://jeanyoon.ch/experiments/scrolling-times/3.webp — Scrolling Times (2023), documentation image 3. - https://jeanyoon.ch/experiments/scrolling-times/4.webp — Scrolling Times (2023), documentation image 4. --- 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.