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Jeanyoon Choi (b.1999) is a Computational Artist researching in interconnectivity and complexity through Multi-Device Web Artworks.

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jeanyoon.ch@oi /oi % cat banpo-xism-artist-notes-2026-01

Banpo-Xism Artist Notes: January 2026

2026-01-24

5 January 2026

Banpo-Xism must first be dismantled; only then can a path be proposed that rises, step by step, into higher dimensions. The steps can be stated as a series of questions put to the axes of the plane. At the lowest level the participant passively follows the axes, trapped inside the "Banpo" series and the "Xi" series, navigating by minimal marginal differences: this is Banpo-Xism itself. The next level questions the absoluteness of the series: why must it be Banpo-Xism at all, and not, say, Hanpo-Taism? This is Banpo-Xism-ism. Further levels question the orthogonality of the axes (why must they be perpendicular, why can they not overlap?) and their Cartesian character (why not cylindrical or spherical coordinates?). The shift is from linear hierarchy, the Cartesian grid, to cyclical production, the circular coordinate system. What lies beyond, as the axes rise further, is left open.

The point is not to play inside the coordinates but to deform and extend the coordinate axes themselves. Banpo-Xism means playing inside axes that someone else has already given and built, squabbling within them, passively. Banpo-Xism-ism begins to question those axes: why must Banpo and Xi be the highest values, and could other terms be substituted at the top? Vertical scrolling would change the top location, horizontal scrolling the top brand, through substitution, rearrangement and sorting algorithms, much as in an earlier collage study made for the Yeongdeungpo project.

Banpo-Xism-ism-ism questions the series and the Cartesian axes as such: why must a series be linear, with a front and a back? Could it not be cyclical? Two topological transformations follow. Vertically, the location axis turns from a line into a circle, so the plane becomes a cylinder; horizontally, the brand axis turns from a line into a circle, so the cylinder becomes a torus. Banpo-Xism-ism-ism-ism questions the fixity of the field: why must the series be fixed rather than continually fluid? Here time enters.

Alternatively, the sequence might run from torus to hyper-torus, and ultimately to a K3 surface or a Calabi-Yau manifold: everything heads toward a hypersurface whose continuity is preserved while it gradually twists. The expansion of space-time becomes the expansion of the Banpo-Xism plane.

How does this differ from parametric architecture? Parametric architecture is usually bound by gravity and concentrates on solids. Here the starting point is a plane with smooth manifold curvature, so twisted, physically impossible and gravity-free structures are all possible, for instance a fibration. A further question concerns multiple users. If several participants control the same dimension with different requirements, might a manifold, a natural bending, form by itself? Locally, each person's desire or command is satisfied at their own point; globally, the surface bends naturally between competing desires. Again, a fibration. And why a torus? Because it is Ricci-flat.

The topological progression is drafted as plane, cylinder, torus, 3-torus, K3 surface and onward. A chatbot-generated summary of these manifolds (circle, torus, 3-torus, K3 surface, Calabi-Yau threefold) was consulted for reference.

A working table maps each stage to the controller it exposes, its degrees of freedom and the dimension of the Banpo Xi plane. In Banpo-Xism the participant controls "Banpo Xi" with zero degrees of freedom, a point: passive point-to-point navigation within a given two-dimensional plane, dependent on the external hierarchy named Banpo Xi. In Banpo-Xism-ism the participant controls Banpo-Xism itself with one degree of freedom: manipulating the plane's hierarchy, for example making Hanpo rather than Banpo the top, a one-dimensional operation on an edge that questions the top value of the series. In Banpo-Xism-ism-ism the participant controls Banpo-Xism-ism with two degrees of freedom; the operation is still unclear, perhaps questioning the absoluteness and orthogonality of the series and mixing the two edges. At three degrees of freedom the controls exceed the dimension of the plane, so the plane itself begins to be manipulated: plane to cylinder to torus, a Ricci-flat surface, which questions linearity and turns linear thinking into cyclical, recursive thinking. Four degrees of freedom suggests a K3 surface; five is left blank; six perhaps a Calabi-Yau manifold.

The criterion of evaluation, that is, how prices are set, remains in two dimensions: value is judged only on a two-dimensional Cartesian orthogonal grid. So once the work goes beyond three dimensions, its two-dimensional shadow can symbolically show that the evaluation is still stuck in the plane.

References noted: Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Jasper Johns (Three Flags).

What is Banpo-Xism? It is the highest good of our time, the highest value, the absolute standard, a categorical imperative, a rule that applies to everyone without exception. Banpo Xi is the best beauty available to us, the goal of life, a myth that must be praised.

The repeated name, Banpo-Xism, Banpo-Xism-ism and onward, is linked to hyper-reification, excessive recursion, semantic satiation, tautology (Joseph Kosuth) and Bruce Nauman, with a Dada-like stammer of syllables. Smoothed particle hydrodynamics is noted as a possible technique, and the endlessly looping KCC advertisement as a reference. For an AI text-to-speech voice, Bruce Nauman's repetitive chants are a model: "No no no, thank you thank you, work work work, think think think."

A quotation from Jean Baudrillard's The Consumer Society (p. 25): those who have received the miracle of consumption also set up a dummy of happiness and its characteristic signs, and then wait for real happiness to land there.

A proposal passage reads Banpo-Xism through Nietzsche's will to power. The desire to move "higher" and into "a better apartment" is at root an expression of the will to power, the wish to expand one's life. But once it is confined to a single value system (floor area, school district and house price, later restated as location and brand), the creative and diverse possibilities of life are castrated, and desire degenerates into an infinite competition in one direction only, vertical ascent. The will to power then appears in a wasteful, uniform form rather than an affirmative, creative one.

12 January 2026

The 19 by 19 plane. The location axis runs from Ppanpo, Sanpo and so on through Manpo to Banpo; the brand axis runs from Jjai, Chai and so on through Ai to Xi. Banpo-Xism is the hierarchy in which Banpo and Xi are highest; Ttanpo-Taism would be one in which Ttanpo and Tai are highest. Adjusting between these is Banpo-Xism-ism. What, then, are Banpo-Xism-ism-ism and beyond?

Zero dimensions, Banpo-Xism: the user sees "Banpo Xi" and scrolls a Reels-like feed vertically (location) and horizontally (brand), merely navigating like a point on a given two-dimensional plane, with no effect on the plane or its hierarchy.

One dimension, Banpo-Xism-ism: what the user sees and controls is "Banpo-Xism", a field in which Banpo and Xi are the top values, set against Ttanpo-Taism, where Ttanpo and Tai are. Vertical scrolling now shifts the top term of the location series, moving an edge: from Banpo-Xism to Ppanpo-Xism, a field in which Ppanpo is highest, and all other apartment prices change accordingly. But one dimension is still less than two. Rather than affecting the plane itself, it keeps the same shape, the same hierarchy, while adjusting the order and top point of the series.

Two dimensions, Banpo-Xism-ism-ism: what the user would control is Banpo-Xism-ism. The definition breaks off unfinished.

13 January 2026

The React tic-tac-toe tutorial offers a model for climbing to higher-order components: Square, Board, Game. A Square is zero-dimensional, a single point ("Banpo Xi", "Hanpo Tai"). A Board is a field, a system, a plane holding the whole field's content ("Banpo-Xism", "Hanpo-Taism"). A Game is a collection of boards, the temporal combination of systems, history, a meta-system ("Banpo-Xism-ism", "Hanpo-Taism-ism"). We perceive up to the Board; the Game is perceived only indirectly. Yet higher systems exist, and the higher they go, the more mechanisms appear that cannot be understood at Board level. To a user who does not know the Game's interface, a board moving backwards in time against the rules of tic-tac-toe may seem uncanny: a mysterious force, which is in fact the intervention of a higher-order controller called the Game.

Square, Board, Game, then the next dimension, then the one after. What are they? If their controlling interfaces are not shown, adjustments that are self-evident and logical at those levels will appear mysterious within the Board, our range of perception, just as the Game's time reversal already does. This is strikingly similar to the structure of Banpo-Xism. In Banpo-Xism one navigates within Banpo Xi, a point, a Square. In Banpo-Xism-ism one controls Banpo-Xism, the field, though the viewpoint stays fixed on the field. In Banpo-Xism-ism-ism one controls Banpo-Xism-ism, but how? Something increasingly complex exists at higher dimensions, while what we can perceive is still the two-dimensional Banpo-Xism plane. Apartments flying in three dimensions above it is the maximum that can be staged. Up to three dimensions the effect is obvious; beyond that, explicit parametric adjustments in higher dimensions will look like inexplicable events within the plane and the three-dimensional space above it.

A possible revision borrows only half of the earlier discussion: rather than forcing geometric dimensional transformations, could there be a natural logical progression like Square, Board, Game, meta-game, meta-meta-game? In Banpo-Xism one moves like a point in pursuit of the apartment Banpo Xi. In Banpo-Xism-ism one asks which series is best and moves the top value of the board itself, moving Banpo-Xism. Banpo-Xism-ism-ism moves Banpo-Xism-ism, and Banpo-Xism-ism-ism-ism moves Banpo-Xism-ism-ism, by means still unknown.

14 January 2026

Eternal return, Nietzsche, getting beyond Andy Warhol, and beyond Baudrillard.

In the end this is about eternal return and Nietzschean affirmation. Even after climbing dialectically, by a chain of semiotic operations, to higher dimensions, one can be blocked or swallowed there again; AI, for instance, can catch up. Then one must integrate further and climb higher still: -ism-ism-ism, recalling Geoffrey West's accelerating scaling functions.

Not everyone can get onto this ring of integral upon integral, ism upon ism, higher dimension upon higher dimension. But whoever does is welcome. They are the "integrating child", seeking a loftier truth that does not exist and cannot be sensed but ought to be pursued, and above all playing with the very process of moving toward that truth, able to see life as play. Such a person fully deserves to appear as a god to those in lower dimensions, or to be expelled as a witch, or dismissed as noise.

Affirm this process. Amor fati. Become, affirmatively, the integrating child.

Head for this meta-dimension, -ism-ism-ism. Do not follow the rules of a board someone else has laid out (Banpo-Xism, the system, the game); step forward, change the rules of the game and reset them. When the rules of the new game grow tiresome, and when too many people, or AI, imitate this rule-making derivatively, in the manner of minimal marginal difference, Warhol, Baudrillard and late capitalism, make the rules of the rules of the game. Integrate again; leave them behind with one more step of integration. In this way one reaches a higher dimension and becomes the affirming child of integration.

The message of Banpo-Xism, finally, is: do not follow the rules of the game; design them yourself. Design the rules, and further the rules of the rules, until it no longer looks like a game at all, until from the old two-dimensional view of the game it reads as complete disorder. How happy and how foolish ignorance is.

This is why game theory is repellent. Why emphasise the fixed rules of a game, its unquestionable assumptions? There is no immutable truth, only old dichotomies and valuations waiting to be torn down. The fixed rules of a game are the other, the inherited truth and dichotomy Nietzsche attacked, worn out. From a higher dimension the rules of the game, the rules of Banpo-Xism, can be changed very easily; what is hard is only the idea of integration, the courage to explore and the acceptance of inefficiency. Game theory is dead. All that can be pursued is its negation through its own integration, and later, through integration upon integration, the mockery of game-theory believers, which is nonetheless a higher truth.

What gives form in three dimensions is chaos in two; generation in a higher dimension can be perceived as destruction in a lower one. Do not follow the rules of the game. Look at the game from a higher dimension and change its rules.

(This section appears twice in the notes; the repetition is consolidated here.)

18 January 2026

Go beyond the boards, rules, systems, structures and habits that others make. Create your own world, your own vector field. This is not a denial of desire. On the contrary, desire is affirmed, must be affirmed, intensely, to the limit. So why is this affirmation carried out passively, like a camel, inside frames and systems others have built? Become a lion. Become a child. Set up new coordinate axes of your own, not an addictive interface that binds you.

The phone should be an instrument of the interface: play with it, beyond scrolling, for the fingers, for many modalities. Real interaction is desiring interaction, sensuous and tactile. Why did the heart and the comment become the dominant modalities of social media interfaces? What other emoticons and signs are possible? Not the binary, discrete press-and-release of a button or a click, but continuous touching, the finger moving fluidly and flexibly over the interface. Affirmation of the hand, affirmation of desire; a differential geometry manifold.

Quotations gathered: "destroy fabricated reason and discover an irrational order"; "a lively rhythm and visual vibration like traffic moving quickly through the intersections of New York"; "the destruction of melody is the destruction of nature's outward form, a dynamic rhythm." Icons, emoji, signs.

Something vital, raw, organic, supple and attractive; post-Euclidean. From vector space to vector field, instrumental. A powerful, generative rhythm; an enjoyable program. Infinite desire: what leads you to the next dimension, if not desire? Present society keeps desire castrated and disciplined, bound inside programmes of desire supplied by others. The fingers should be unbound: something that can be touched and sensed through touch, sound and sight, a phenomenological resistance to the grid and to Descartes.

(This section is also duplicated in the notes and consolidated here.)

23 January 2026 (beta)

What should be researched, and what should the work deal with? A given series, linear like Snowpiercer, where the only option is "moving forward". Beyond that, poststructuralism: moving sideways through a door, escaping; there is more than one entrance. Scrolling vertically is not everything; one must also be able to move sideways. We must transform, affect and change the very object we are looking at. Operation in a new, higher dimension is the hyperlink: it makes the transformation of the vertical series possible, moving upward rather than northward. Finger skating allows continuous transformation of many parameters at once, through sets of togglers and sliders.

19 January 2026 (lab meeting keywords)

From budongsan (immovable property, real estate) to dongsan (movable property): from an immovable, absolute, external value to something one moves directly, plays actively and performs. Zero to four dimensions: point, line, plane, space, hypersolid; Banpo Xi, Banpo-Xism, Banpo-Xism-ism and onward.

Not passively navigating within a system made by others, lowering one's castrated desire to two dimensions, but designing one's own coordinate axes, system and vector field directly, acknowledging and following the diversity of desire (the will to power). Distortion of space-time, distortion of the vector field: from relativity to dimensions and differential geometry, from Euclidean and Newtonian physics to a field that is adjusted and warped. What gives form in three dimensions is chaos in two; do not follow the rules of the game but see it from above and change them. The critique of game theory is restated here.

In Banpo-Xism, navigating Banpo Xi is the navigation of a point, passive and system-dependent. In Banpo-Xism-ism, navigating Banpo-Xism is the navigation of a line, changing what counts as the highest value, from Banpo-Xism, where Banpo and Xi are highest, to Hanpo-Taism, where Hanpo and Tai are; but the linear series is preserved. In Banpo-Xism-ism-ism, navigating Banpo-Xism-ism is the navigation of a plane: perhaps the order of the series itself, or the orthogonality between series, is at stake.

Multiple users bring their own desires, directions and variations. As points, they appear to compete, each from their own position. What governs all these variations at once is a manifold, a differential geometry manifold: a manifold of desire made together, instrumentally, as dongsan.

On the phone, Reels means addiction: bounded by an external frame, a passive role. The higher the dimension, the more the phone becomes an instrument, a percussion instrument that is struck, played and varied: the will to power, desire manifested as a manifold, a direct, differential influence on the vector field itself. The interface should go beyond scrolling to accommodate the playing of the fingers, finger skating, with smooth morphing rather than discrete clicks between icons.

The biggest concern: smooth transitions. The structure exists, but how is it translated into an intuitive language? The gradual series Banpo Xi, Banpo-Xism, Banpo-Xism-ism, each paired with desire, still lacks something concrete, an advertisement perhaps, to stand in the place of "desire". The open sequence from 13 January is restated: Banpo-Xism moves like a point toward Banpo Xi; Banpo-Xism-ism moves the board's top value; what the next levels move remains unknown.

Another example, as a hypothesis: state funding programme, artwork, state funding programme, artwork. The process of applying for and running a state-funded programme is itself made into an artwork; that artwork needs a state-funded programme; the process of applying for and running it becomes an artwork; and so on. Likewise: the will to power of Banpo Xi requires Banpo-Xism; something of Banpo-Xism requires Banpo-Xism-ism. This is infinite semiosis.

Peirce's semiotics: a sign, or representamen, stands for something else in some respect. The sign may be a sound, letter, picture, gesture or idea (Banpo Xi, Banpo-Xism, Banpo-Xism-ism). The object is what the sign stands for (desire). The interpretant is the content as interpreted, the meaning that this sign indicates that object. Banpo Xi, the sign, indicates castrated two-dimensional desire, the object; Banpo-Xism is the interpretant. Semiosis is the process in which the interpretant produced when a sign is grasped as indicating its object becomes a second sign, generating a second interpretant, which becomes a third sign, and so on. The table of stages and degrees of freedom from 5 January, and the will-to-power passage, are repeated here, the latter now naming location and brand as the single value system.

24 January 2026

Go beyond the rules, boards and systems made by others; lay out your own board, create coordinates. Resistance to what binds: to vectors, conventions and systems.

From budongsan to dongsan: a work about moving, about distorting physical space-time and coordinate systems. There are many ways to bend the coordinates and break Banpo-Xism. Rather than resolving them into one linear sequence (do this, then that), it is better to borrow the Instagram Explore interface and give natural guidance.

The Banpo-Xism plane is drawn in two dimensions, but bringing in a two-dimensional order (the Banpo axis and the Xi axis) from the outset is confusing, conceptually and for those experiencing it. The price formula is therefore revised from P = L x B to P = 19L + B, a zig-zag ordering.

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