# 동일한 파동들에서 다채로운 Ψ로 Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/banpo-xism-artist-notes-2025-08-04 Type: essay / research note Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤) Date: 2025-08-04 ## Full text Update Key concept: redrawing the existing city through interaction. The existing understanding of the city (perception of the city / physical maps / the Euclidean-Cartesian grid / tree / disentanglement / top-down / Banpo-Xism) engaged through interaction (instrumental interaction / the urban flaneur of Benjamin and Baudelaire / collage / the city becomes a piano keyboard / playfulness) to draw a new topological, relational city (cartography in Deleuze's sense / psychogeography / off-the-grid / semi-lattice and rhizome / entanglement / bottom-up agent-based modelling / emergence / network graph). That is the first half. So what will the second half be? It is still dry. If you play with it and interact with it, what do you end up making? Is there a real-data city versus a future city, or just real data? Why should this be done at all? There is no emotion. So what is it for? Why? A problem of generations? A problem of the city at a wider scale? An emotional line... What I want to say, and how: nuance, irony, saying it outright, propaganda. Something as plain as: "I will use Naver Labs to make ___." "I will use NASA data to talk about water shortage." Q. Deleuze and the fold? Point, line and plane are not everything. No dichotomy. No clear division. Origami. Deleuze's origami: a spatial-temporal concept that cannot be made with points, lines and planes. References: Entanglement Part 3 (inter-screen edges and links); Cornelia Parker; Archigram, MVRDV, Koolhaas, BIG (via Jang Yongsoon's The Topology of the City). Visual tests: visuals Naver Labs would like, making the most of the 3D digital city model. For key visuals? Visual versus functional explanation. Reference: Shibuya Crowd by mattatz. I made a series of test sketches: 3D explosion, 3D collage, 2D explosion, 3D sparse-dense. Statement: Psi The new towns of the capital region, represented by the "Gangnam way of life", are like a Procrustean bed. They deform and castrate individuals so that they follow the city's planned, collective, upward-looking symbolic rules. In grid-like cubicles, individuals are educated and trained to win happiness through competition, and this paradoxically produces homogenised happy machines: homogeneous, cloned waves with the same wavelength and phase, differing only in amplitude. As the architect Christopher Alexander pointed out, the (naturally grown) city is not a tree but a semi-lattice. Or, as Deleuze and Guattari propose, it should have the structure of a rhizome rather than a tree. The ideal city cannot be defined as a "Gangnam-life city" equipped with residential district + commercial district + waterfront district (+ education district). "Change in a city never happens in an orderly way; rather, the city is something complex and messy, overlapping as if by accident." The city has the character of a complex system rather than a reducible one. And the place that shows this complex, rhizomatic, semi-lattice character most representatively is Yeongdeungpo. This work, Ψ, is an interactive web work designed so that several visitors, using their mobile phones, emergently and simultaneously control an environment of surrounding projectors and screens. Before anyone connects, the initial screens show a grid of identical waves. Each visitor connects through an NFC tag to an area of Yeongdeungpo and meets the initial mesh of a photorealistic 3D city. By touch, the visitor presses each component of the city as if "playing" it, and (first) the surrounding screens immediately expose information on that urban element. (Second) If two or more visitors "play" at the same time, the elements are combined simultaneously into a single visual chord (like psychogeography). (Third) On top of this, the urban fabric activated earlier and the fabric being newly "played" add up to a new kind of emergent urban network, like agent-based modelling (ABM). This urban network replaces the grid of identical waves and shows colourful waves with diverse phases, wavelengths and amplitudes. Ψ (psi) is the quantum-physical symbol for the wave function. The sum of identical, cloned waves Ψ that differ only in amplitude is in the end indistinguishable from an individual Ψ. But different, colourful Ψs create a Fourier-like complex system, a dynamic structure. The work Ψ proposes a design of the city that goes beyond homogeneous Ψ towards colourful Ψ, or further, a mode of complex-systems thinking. Key references: complexity science; network/graph; wave function; city; city and flaneur; Jang Yongsoon's philosophical and complex-systems understanding of city and architecture; instrumental interaction; NIME. What I want to say The opposite of Banpo-Xism. - Childhood, sameness, petit-bourgeois and professional families. Rules, happiness, family. - The breeding of happy machines. - Competitive individualism ends up producing collective sameness. The same rules. - Competition and individualism with clear rules (university entrance exams, law school, Banpo Xi) make individuals keep the same rules and rank highly whoever performs well inside the frame, so people lock themselves inside the frame and deform themselves to fit it. A Procrustean bed. - Individuals reduced to the same parameters; the only difference is height (rank). - Like waves: every waveform identical, only the amplitude differs. - Similar to scientific reductionism: if each individual performs well in some specific field, society as a whole will perform well. - The mechanisation of the individual, the mechanisation of the object. - City is a tree. - The symbolic order: rules and discipline (Jang Yongsoon). Similarity with urban structure: City is a tree. Top-down zoning, new towns. Banpo-Xism: Banpo Xi itself is not the problem. Because environments like Banpo Xi, like the Gangnam way of life (identical apartments, identical apartment design, floor areas, waterfront settings, shopping such as the Shinsegae department store), have been built all over the country, comparison becomes possible. Because comparison is possible, ranking becomes possible, and so a hierarchy can be built from the top of the pyramid called Banpo. People are not conscious of Pyeongchang-dong or Hannam-dong, for instance; they long for Banpo, Apgujeong, Jamsil. Because the sameness is so great, people are all the more aware of differences (minimal marginal difference, Baudrillard). These differences make ranking possible, as if the ranking carried absolute value, and if you are pushed out of this absolute ranking (if you live in a new town rather than Banpo), it is perceived as if you do not have a good life. That is the problem. Similar phenomena: the ranking of jobs, of majors, of universities. Why complexity systems, complexity science, systems? Complexity science: the whole cannot be explained from the parts. Emergence: a collective behaviour which is not spotted in the individual components. - Against scientific reductionism. - Against competitive individualism, against Banpo-Xism. - Against "City is a tree": City is a semi-lattice. What I ultimately want to do in the long term through system art and MDWA: a sense of complex systems, complexity (system) experience design. Visualising, making experiential and embodying complex systems in interactive, multi-device form. "The return of the real", the sense of a hyperobject, the sense of chaos and chaosmos. Method Repetition compulsion (Jang Yongsoon): repeat a particular object and other characteristics come out. Repeat a rational object and it produces irrational results. Andy Warhol, Gursky, Christian Marclay. Traffic patterns: each person's each movement makes a rational point A to B, but the person observing and gazing at it all (zoning out, traffic-gazing) sees something else. MTDBRI: an animation by mtdbri visualising the movement of about 460 subway trains across New York City. Kakao's high-precision subway map. Each node-to-node route is rational routing; the whole sum of routes is one emergent pattern. The wave metaphor. The individual in the symbolic order, like a machine, competes inside identical waveforms. Competitive individualism: sameness. ψ = A sin(kx - wt + φ) = f(A, λ, T, φ) Here, for the symbolic order and its happy machines, (λ, T, φ) are all identical, and people compete only over A (entrance exams / luxury bags, the consumption of signs / apartment location, Banpo-Xism). So individual = collective character, individual = machine, individual = c × individual. Sum of ψ = C × ψ The property of the whole = the property of the part. The real: the diversity of individuals, a world where each lives by their own rhythm and colour. Colourful rhythms, all different (λ, T, φ) → (λ', T', φ'). A Fourier transform makes a complex overall waveform. Beats. Each individual waveform is simple and periodic; the overall waveform is chaotic and complex. Connected to ABM (agent-based modelling). The network metaphor. The individual in the symbolic order: every node is the same. No difference between nodes, no edge between nodes (a side effect of competitivism and reductionism). Or another reading: edges between nodes exist superficially, on the skin, but only as pretence, only as the spread of trends. Diverse individuals: every individual is different. G(V, E). Because every node is different, there are clear differences among the edges. Every node differs, with different potentials and characteristics; the difference between nodes (a potential difference) generates edges, generates emergence, generates G(V, E). Reference: Collective Opinion. Proposal outline A1. Why? Narrative and purpose of the project The problem - The uniformity of the "Gangnam way of life": contemporary Korean cities are being standardised into the "Gangnam way of life" (apartments + retail + waterfront) represented by "Banpo-Xism", and this deepens the concentration on Gangnam as the single pole. - The limits of the "tree" structure: this urban model aims at a top-down, zoned, hierarchical tree structure, which suppresses diversity and pursues the symbolic over the real (a one-sided pursuit of stability over chaos). - An alternative to the Gangnam way of life and its single pole: Yeongdeungpo-ness, Yeongdeungpo dynamics. Yeongdeungpo-ness and chaosmos - The city as a semi-lattice (Christopher Alexander): the city is essentially a complexly entangled semi-lattice structure. This project focuses on the dynamic dynamics that Yeongdeungpo has, as an alternative to Gangnam. - The character of Yeongdeungpo: housing, commerce, industry, finance and politics coexist; generations, classes and cultures collide; diverse forces intersect. A representative "chaosmos" space in Seoul. - The concept of chaosmos (Deleuze): the city must function with order (cosmos) and chaos coexisting. When chaos and diversity are affirmed, greater "emergence" appears. A city filled only with order risks repressed energy erupting abnormally. Project goals - Experience Yeongdeungpo, a "chaosmos", in a new way. - Intuitively experience the city's dynamic order and emergence. Main references: A City is Not a Tree (Christopher Alexander); the psychoanalysis of the city, chaosmos (Deleuze, Jang Yongsoon). A2. How? The experiential side, the interaction side Instrumental interaction - Core principle: every interaction should be intuitive and tactile like playing an instrument (Marshall McLuhan), with rich combinatorial possibility (Daily tous les jours). - Rules and freedom: like piano keys, clear rules (constraint) enable infinite combination and variation (flexibility), inviting users to create their own "music". This is the essence of the tool, which "opens possibility through limitation". Phenomenological and semantic - Phenomenological experience: the sensory experience of connecting directly to the city through the tactile act of "touching" and "stroking" a smartphone interface. - Semantic experience: touching the city's components through interaction, and recreating new meaning from the connections between them. City-player - The visitor: not a passive spectator but an active agent who plays the city, a complex-system instrument. - Stages of playing: contact (the visitor touches the interface for the first time and learns input-output causality); playing (having learned the rules, the visitor naturally combines and varies the interface and begins to "play"); creation (the tactile act creates an urban system made of the surrounding screens). City-walker - Baudelaire's flaneur; Benjamin's One-Way Street and the Arcades; Guy Debord's psychogeography. - The visitor drifts through the city via a digital interface; the city-walk inside a tactile experience (interaction) is reconstructed into a new audiovisual city (output, complex system). Main references: Daily tous les jours, 21 Swings; Jeffrey Shaw, The Legible City; Christian Marclay, Playing Pompidou. A3. What? Complexity science, urban systems City and complex systems - Attempts in complexity science to understand the city as a complex system: Michael Batty (CASA UCL, The New Science of Cities, Fractal Cities); the Santa Fe Institute (complexity science, scaling laws); MIT CityScope. - Complexity-science references to model and explain urban dynamics, Yeongdeungpo's amorphous, unpredictable dynamics (more study needed...). Emergence - Principle: the spontaneous appearance of a new order or pattern at the level of the whole system that cannot be explained by the sum of individual components. - Simple rules, complex results: as in the basic principle of complexity science, each user's simple, independent rules of behaviour come together into an unpredictable, complex and intricate pattern of the whole system (cellular automata, maximalism via minimalism). - One user interacting: simple results. Two or more users interacting at once: compound results; emergence appears inter-user, inter-agent. - Refer to ABM (agent-based modelling) and the like. Main references: Michael Batty; MIT CityScope; Jane Jacobs; Warren Weaver and Herbert Simon. B. Overall experience Device structure: multiple mobile inputs, one system, multiple screen and projector outputs. - Mobile input: selected intersections across Yeongdeungpo; instrumental interaction at each point (single node). - System: a kind of simulation of urban structure. It starts from a void or null state, combines one or several inputs in real time (nodes), generates interconnection from this combination (edges), and also forms emergence (how?). - Projector output: draws the same urban system in different visual languages (abstract or figurative, 3D or 2D; specific composition undecided...). Overall experience: - Natural, intuitive tactile interaction on a mobile makes the surrounding screens respond (single node). - When interactions happen simultaneously on different mobiles (multiple nodes), an emergent dimension is generated (edges, inter-node emergence). - With a single node, the urban system responds passively to the user's interaction. - With multiple nodes, the urban system works emergently and automatically (automata), evolving and emerging by itself even without further user interaction. C1. Mobile input interaction Demo links (based on Shibuya, Tokyo): a Mapbox demo; a 3D model demo; a 3D model + AR demo. Access - (Tentative) A physical map of the city? A 3D-printed model of Yeongdeungpo? - Ten to twelve intersections in Yeongdeungpo: Yeouido, Yeongdeungpo Station, the National Assembly, Dangsan, Mullae, Yeongdeungpo-gu Office, Daerim, Sinpung, etc. - Access via RFID chip: no QR; bring the phone close to connect to each intersection point (intersectionId 0 to 12). 3D city - 3D map, seen slightly from above (10 to 20 m, a semi bird's-eye POV). A floating viewpoint rather than ordinary street view. - Photorealistic (a Naver Labs digital twin?) versus an abstract map. - Several logistic issues (getting data, performance optimisation, aligning with the narrative, etc.). For example: Mapbox has no building data for Yeongdeungpo, or for Korea! Core interaction - Interacting by pressing each building on the 3D map (phenomenological). - Pressing each building and letting it morph naturally is tactile and instrumental: like a percussion instrument, it turns 2D, flat buildings into 3D. - This interaction generates parameters in real time and affects the urban system (semantic): location parameters (the current intersection, the building's position); building parameters (the building's physical and contextual characteristics); interaction parameters (intensity, duration, pattern of the interaction, etc.). - Changing viewpoint and travelling to other intersections: tentative additions. References: AR interactions; Playing Pompidou. C2. System design Combinatorial explosion - Basic philosophy: apply the principle by which a limited number of simple elements (piano keys, DNA's A, C, G, T, LEGO bricks) create near-infinite combinations. - Principle of implementation: the user's simple, intuitive interactions are the elements of notation. Their combination drives complex, rich change in the whole system. - Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (Gunpei Yokoi). Agent-based modelling (ABM) - Agent: each "intersection-instrument" is an independent agent. - Superposition of waves: the parameter set (a, b, c, d) each agent generates is combined and superposed within the system into one complex-system rule. - Specific method TBD; more study of the theory and implementation of complexity science and ABM needed... From solo to symphony - Single user/agent: playing one instrument, playing one neighbourhood (Mullae-dong as instrument A). - Multiple users/agents: the chord of several instruments. When many interactions happen at once, they form not a simple sum but, through interaction, an unpredictable harmony and an emergent system (a symphony). Mullae-dong + Yeouido; Yeongdeungpo-dong + the front of the National Assembly + Daerim-dong; and so on. An enormous number of combinations is possible. - Not holding these as pre-determined combinations, but systemically simulating countless results for countless combinations. - Through this, one plays the city's entangled, semi-lattice, chaosmos dynamics. A collective, chaotic-yet-ordered (chaosmos), semantic-yet-phenomenological experience. C3. Multi-channel output One system, multi-channel output - The role of the multiple channels is to show the city's many faces colourfully and from different viewpoints, while unity across channels must also be guaranteed. - The same system, the same city, shown variously from different sides. Visual style: hybrid collage. Not a realistic representation of a particular city, but a display of the city's systemic essence, its city-ness. (Provisional) - Screen A: a collage of 3D buildings? Buildings rising one by one on a neon-like grid plane? - Screen B: psychogeography, a collage of maps. Each intersection, and rhizomatic edges or lines wildly joining the intersections? (Entanglement Part 3, inter-screen lines.) - Screen C: node-edge links expressing emergence and systemness? Neural-network-like? (Entanglement Part 1, Machine.) Overall, these are things to decide after a deeper understanding of, and more thought about, the narrative and complexity science... --- 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.