# 전체의 특성은 부분의 합이 아니다

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/banpo-xism-artist-notes-2025-07-18
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2025-07-18

## Full text

The individual within the Symbolic, as with a machine: competition within an identical wave.

ψ = A sin(kx − ωt + φ) = f(A, λ, T, φ)

Here, for the Symbolic, for the petit bourgeois, (λ, T, φ) are all identical, and they compete only over A (the university entrance exam, luxury bags (the consumption of signs), apartment location (Banpo-Xism)).

Therefore individual = collective trait, individual = machine, individual = c × individual.
Sum of ψ = C × ψ.
The property of the whole = the property of the part (reductionism holds; the machine, happy machines).

But if the values of (λ, T, φ) become different... Fourier! A symphony! Beats! Each agent acts differently... Sum of ψ ≠ ψ.

Understanding the parts no longer means understanding the whole. The property of the whole is not the sum of the properties of the parts. A complex system, the generation of emergence: all agents become different from one another. An ABM is generated.

A metaphor from graph theory:
Before: every node is the same. No difference between nodes, no edges between nodes (competitionism, a side effect of reductionism). (Or another reading: edges between nodes exist superficially, on the skin, but only at the level of pretence, only at the level of the spread of trends.)
After: every node is different, with different potentials and properties. The difference between nodes (a potential difference) generates edges, generates emergence: G(V, E) comes into being.

I emphasise irrationality through the repetition of rational objects: through the interactive transformation of the rational objects (λ, T, φ) into (λ', T', φ'), I create complexity and emergence.

ABM-like ideas and figures: flow? Traffic flow. But I am not taking the artwork's expression explicitly in the direction of traffic flow.
(The earlier Symbolic): squares, grids, rules. CCTV, real-estate transactions, the administrative map of Yeongdeungpo-gu, the cadastral real-estate map, text (the Symbolic), petit-bourgeois representation and manufactured happiness, colourless and odourless (the cubicles of PlayTime, Tati).
Then PUNCTUM: inter-cluster, inter-cubicle, inter-intersection interaction. A tipping point (via interaction), semi-lattice (Christopher Alexander).

Why the metaphor of waves?
- The sum of waves, the Fourier transform metaphor (Sparks of Genius: the sum of simple patterns and waves makes a complex system; the property of the whole differs from the property of the parts; linked to ABM too).
- The laws of thermodynamics, physical metaphors, quantum metaphors, chaosmos.
- Periodicity T.
- Music, instrumentality: the naturalness of moving waves with instruments, with instrumental interaction.

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