# ONE LINK = ONE MODALITY

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/banpo-xism-artist-notes-2026-02-28
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2026-02-28

## Full text

Banpo-Xism: a Multi-Device Web Artwork (MDWA)

Multiple mobiles: visitors join through a QR code. Multi-user, several phones can connect at once (sometimes one person comes alone and connects alone, sometimes two, three or four connect; all of these must be accommodated).
MW (Media Wall): a large media wall. The main canvas, where the distortion of "Banpo-Xism" through interaction is visualised most representatively.
3 PCs: three vertical 55- or 65-inch displays.
Installation: all devices are installed in the same exhibition space. Parameters adjusted on the phones affect the MW and the PCs in real time. An interactive Multi-Device Web Artwork.

Overview of each device's role

Mobile: the visitors' medium of interaction. An Instagram Explore-like interface. At first its role is simply to scroll up and down in a low dimension. After an advertisement is clicked, it gradually enters higher dimensions, distorting "Banpo-Xism" and restructuring it in those dimensions. This interaction happens variably, divergently, combinatorially and as scenarios, following rhizomatic hyperlink connections; two or more visitors can restructure the MW simultaneously and differently through different modalities.

MW (Media Wall): the main visualisation. Initial state: a 19 by 19 plane, with 19 by 19 (361 in all) apartment complexes placed on a two-dimensional Cartesian plane, each complex made of 5 by 5 (25) buildings. Change: this 95 by 95 plane is structurally distorted by successive higher-dimensional interactions (at stage N=3 it rises along the y-axis, and afterwards it collapses into a higher-dimensional manifold).

3 PCs: offer supplementary contexts.
PC 0 (Location + Brand Texts): corresponds to the current phone user's location value (Ppanpo ... Banpo) and brand value (Jjai ... Xi). With several users connected, a tower is generated for each user. Each is densely filled with gossip texts that follow the hierarchy of each location, giving a contextual background.
PC 1 (Dashboard): an area not yet developed. Above, a grid showing users' current positions on the 19 by 19 grid; below, a ranking.
PC 2 (Coordinate/Main): shows the 19 by 19 main grid, from "Ppanpo Jjai" at bottom left to "Banpo Xi" at top right, with real-time prices for all 361 entries in the series.

The initial structure of the Banpo-Xism series

Location: Ppanpo, Sanpo, ... Banpo (a series of 19, one for each Korean initial consonant).
Brand: Jjai, ... Xi (likewise a series of 19).
Price range: minimum "Ppanpo Jjai" (100 million won) to maximum "Banpo Xi" (10 billion won).
Hierarchy formula: P = 19 × L + B. Prices form a linear hierarchy of the 361 entries (Ppanpo Jjai ... Ppanpo Xi ... Sanpo Xi ... Banpo Xi). In the initial states N=1 and 2, this two-dimensional formula holds absolutely.

The first mobile interaction (N=1)

Interface: an Instagram Explore-like interface.
Interaction:
- Scroll: each step down moves to the next entry in the series (360 scrolls needed in all).
- Navigate: moving left or right on each entry reveals different card-news content, as in the Instagram Explore tab.
Trigger (advertisement):
- Content: "Meet a world of a different dimension."
- Message: it affirms minimal marginal difference and capitalist desire and exaggerates them to the point of ridicule (reference: The Palace 73's "For you who dream of inequality"). An indictment of vulgar capitalism and fetishism. References in advertising art: Yoko Ono, Barbara Kruger.
- Inducement: the more one scrolls, the more repeatedly and blatantly it appears, inviting a click.
Hyperlink click: a click leads to the mobile URL of a new dimension.

Mobile interaction after that

Original plan: N=1, 2, 3, 4..., climbing linearly to higher dimensions, with only one way to climb the higher-dimensional interfaces (2D, then 3D, then 4D).
Its drawbacks: 1) it is hard to understand; 2) it is also hard to implement; 3) its mathematical and physical assumptions are unintuitive; 4) it cannot accommodate many different modalities.
The existing square-inside-square-inside-square layout also makes very little sense and is awkward to interact with.

Hence the new plan: hyperlinks, distributed, several links, linked to each other via advertisements. From one link to another: on a link you see an advertisement and move to yet another link. The links act as vertices (V) and edges (E), connected rhizomatically into a whole directed graph G(V, E). Under this graph structure, users can explore other links simultaneously, rhizomatically and in a distributed way, using the advertisements as their medium. Only at the first step (N=1) is there a single link to N=2; from N=2 onward there are countless ways of navigating that many users can sail freely.

Key: ONE LINK = ONE INTERFACE = ONE MODALITY = ONE FUNCTIONALITY/PROGRAM = MULTIPLE ADVERTISEMENTS (TO OTHER LINKS)

Link: one could assign a dimension, as in ?n=2, but it is more effective to make each one an independent link with its own id, such as ?voice, ?face-detection, ?phone-shake, ?coordinate-edit.
Interface: an intuitive interaction is performed on the interface.
Modality: each interface corresponds to one distinct modality. Through this modality (voice, finger, face detection, shake, and more later), the visitor can distort the MW in their own way.
Functionality/program: the modality performs a specific function on the MW through parametric mapping. Shaking the phone, for example, does not simply rotate the camera viewpoint looking at the MW manifold; it rotates the manifold itself, which radically changes the price of each apartment on the fixed L-B road grid plane. This close relation between modality and function works through force, that is, through Nietzsche's will to power.
Multiple advertisements: on each interface several advertisements intervene, so that one can intuitively reach other links (there is absolutely no need to connect perfectly to every link; a structure like the directed graph G(V, E) is enough). The advertisement is the most textual content appearing on the mobile interface. Its form can vary with the layout and context of each interface (modal, pop-up, embedded, and so on). Its design style is strictly unified (white background, black text, Pretendard Bold, capitalist copy). It is important to develop modularly, so that every link provokes enough interest in visitors and gives an experience that distorts the MW.

Principles (important)

Cold media: guidance such as "try interacting like this", labelling of particular parameters, or attempts to explain explicitly in text what is happening now must be excluded as far as possible. The kind, text-based guidelines common in existing interactive art must be avoided. Instead, the look of the interface itself (the use of toggles, sliders and arrows, and nudging through composition and layout) comes first. Through this, visitors perform a particular operation naturally, and must experience the process in which that interaction causes a particular output distortion on the MW and PCs in real time: intuitively, non-verbally, forcefully, bodily (embodied) and instrumentally. This principle must be kept.
No direct context, no explanation of what an interaction provides, is ever given (never offer, no explicit text). Only the advertisement text on the previous link nudges toward it.

Force and Dionysus: whatever form the visitor's interaction modality takes (finger, voice, shake...), it must distort the MW through Nietzschean "will to power" and Dionysian qualities. This means the visitor's autonomy, their Dionysian nature, liberation from Cartesian reason. Such interaction is already partly implemented through voice and through mobile shake interaction using the accelerometer. (Embodiments of force and Dionysus: Nam June Paik's Magnet TV, Jackson Pollock's drip paintings.)

Advertisement design: strictly text-centred, in the form of propaganda. Matching the visual style of the PC channel, Pretendard Bold fills the screen (references: works by Jenny Holzer, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Barbara Kruger, Yoko Ono and others).
It borrows the kind of "capitalist copy" common in advertising.
For example: Experience a higher dimension. Be the protagonist. Change the board. Shake the world.
Such copy borrows capitalist desire and at the same time gives a direct hint about the new modality met after the click (e.g. a higher dimension leads to actually raising the dimension; "Make your voice heard" to voice interaction; "Shake it" to accelerometer shaking; "Change the board" to an interaction that changes the coordinate system itself).
A kind of Dadaist connection.

Multi-user accommodation: every modification of the MW by interaction must take into account that multiple users can interact simultaneously, concurrently.
The interaction for a particular programme must not start again from a state where the MW, as modified by earlier interactions, has been reduced back to the Cartesian plane (reset to initial values); the new programme must be introduced "on top of" the stage where the previous interaction ended (the twisted result). Extremely important.
That is: never let going to a new link reset the whole MW manifold.
Interaction logic: AND, not OR.
E.g. when visitor 1 is adjusting N=2, visitor 2 is adjusting voice and visitor 3 is shaking their phone, all three must be shown simultaneously and cumulatively (the field is adjusted, and at the same time it expands and rotates).
Cases where several people use the same modality or link at once must also be considered:
E.g. when visitors 1 and 2 are both adjusting N=2 (1: Hanpo-Taism, five seconds ago; 2: Ganpo-Kkaism, one second ago), rearrange according to the latest user, arranging by Ganpo-Kkaism.
E.g. when visitors 1 and 2 are both adjusting voice, add up what the two voices contribute and disperse the MW manifold accordingly.
For this, each link or modality must be classed as competition-based or collaboration-based (e.g. N=2 is competition, but voice is cumulative, collaboration-based).
Also, some interactions are time-dependent (shake, voice, etc.) and some are time-independent. This must be considered in the long run too.
A transformation like a "vector sum".

Current list (in the order: advertising copy, modality, description)

"Meet a world of a different dimension"
This one is a special case: the same copy leads to a different link depending on which link it appears on (click it in 2D and you go to 3D, click it in 3D and you go to 4D, and so on).
N=1, 2, 3, 4, 5: the goal is to increase the mathematical dimension and collapse the hierarchy.
In each dimension, one can intuitively adjust as many parameters as that dimension has (3, 4, ...).
N=1 and 2 keep the two-dimensional plane.
At N=3, a finger-skating interaction on the phone's surface lifts the plane into three dimensions (the y-axis lift yields the price P).
From N=4 on, even this lifted three-dimensional terrain is twisted into a torus or other higher-dimensional manifolds.
Of course these, too, connect at each step to other links (to programmes other than dimension control).

"Make your voice heard"
The function is already implemented at mobile/3/0, but only the function; it is mixed with other modalities (violating the one-link, one-functionality, one-modality rule).
Rework it into an interface that asks only for the voice modality and corresponds to it.
In the centre, at the same scale as the current N=2 build, the N=1 interface is shown for the currently highlighted apartment (the highlighted apartment's interface and price), and, as in the N=2 build, the price changes with the voice (the scale of the central interface itself also changes, as straightforward visual feedback). (The difference from the N=2 build: N=2 navigates among the 19 by 19 = 361 entries; the voice link is not like that. There is only one interface, and it deforms with the loudness of the voice.)
A slider bar at the bottom (again without a text indicator) adjusts intensity; adjusting it changes the sensitivity to the voice.
Advertisements appear as a banner plus pop-ups.

"Be the protagonist"
Face detection; details to be decided.

"Shake the world" (or is there better copy?)
Phone shake.
Similar to the current phone shake (in modality and functionality), but the interface must become single link = single modality = single functionality.
As with voice, the N=1 interface sits in the centre; as the phone is shaken its angle changes, and the price changes correspondingly.

"Change the board"
Coordinate edit.
Literally transforming the coordinate system that was Cartesian into cylindrical, spherical, or yet more three-dimensional coordinate systems.
It must work while coexisting with the high-dimensional manifold edits.
(Add better ideas if there are any.)

N=2 (already implemented)

Scrolling up, down, left or right: not simple movement but the overturning of the series' own hierarchy (e.g. the hierarchy [Ppanpo ... Banpo], where Banpo was highest, flips into [Banpo, Ppanpo, ... Manpo]).
19 by 19 cards in all, with advertisements (for different programmes) in the outer two rows and columns.

The most important thing: three conditions for mobile interaction

1. Free, like Nam June Paik's Magnet TV: freely affirm the positions the finger goes to. Not moving only inside a fixed GUI: when the finger moves freely over the interface, affirm those positions as they are (just as the image changes intuitively when a magnet moves freely over the TV).
2. Finger skating. The principle of finger skating: designed for the finger. If the finger glides smoothly back and forth over the interface without lifting, that changes the parameters by itself, and that changes the functionality on the MW. As in playing the violin (or playing the piano fast), continuous movement, continuous finger movement, continuously changes the MW according to a specific parameter mapping: the principle of instrumental design, scrolling, scroll damping and so on. Not quantised interaction where you press one button, lift your hand and press a button again, but the finger skating smoothly and elegantly over the smartphone interface while changing the parameters behind it in real time. Just as, with Magnet TV, moving the magnet smoothly over the TV smoothly changes the image behind it.
3. Field operation: adjusting the physical field (originally Banpo-Xism) in differential-geometric terms (the field's natural language).
The collapse of hierarchy: the collapse of the existing hierarchy, authority and one-directionality (TV). A counterpunch.

Important: the system mechanism

Logic settled so far (certain points):
Interactions on the phones "collectively" affect the "field" of the MW's 19 by 19 apartment layout.
They lift off the two-dimensional Cartesian plane, bend it and vary it in many ways.
Overlapping, simultaneous interactions from many phones appear on the manifold as a summed vector, and the visitors vary "Banpo-Xism" together.
Projection logic:
From the bent field (manifold) of "Banpo-Xism", there are coordinates projected onto the two-dimensional grid (the road layout): the (L, B) coordinate system.
These projected coordinate values determine the altered prices of the 361 apartments.
N=3 (the lifting stage): the visitor's finger skating (adjusting the formula) lifts the two-dimensional plane along the y-axis, and this lifted height is itself visualised intuitively as the new price (P) (a three-dimensional departure from the initial, location-bound formula). The collapse of P = 19 × L + B.
N=4 and above (the topological collapse stage): when the whole field twists nonlinearly, the y-axis heights fluctuate accordingly. These new y-axis prices affect each apartment's new P value. Result: slight interaction in a high dimension, radical price change and hierarchy inversion. (The initially intuitive lifting finally leads to a completely incomprehensible collapse of hierarchy.)

Synchronisation:
The prices and coordinates on every screen, PC, mobile and so on, reflect in real time the orthogonal projection of the bent MW.
Through real-time updates, the PC coordinate display intuitively explains that the mobile interaction changes the price hierarchy.

Sound interaction:
Source: "Hymn to Banpo-Xism", made with Suno (lyrics: "Banpo Xi, living here feels like my dream~").
Logic: at N=1 the original song plays. From N>=2 the distortion begins.
Distortion rule: the further the price of "Banpo Xi" departs from 10 billion won (the reference), lower or higher, the heavier the distortion of the sound. The high-dimensional manifold distortion is made audible through playback rate and algorithms.

Requirements and scaffolding strategy

Goal: scaffolding that leads naturally into higher dimensions as one climbs N=1, 2 ... 7.
N=1 (The Trap):
Keep the Instagram scroll. Navigation one step at a time.
A frog-in-the-well interaction. It provokes competitiveness and dopamine among multiple users and induces aggressive scrolling.
Key message: the bloody, yet arid, competition within a low dimension.
N>=2 (The Awakening):
Flow: mobile transformation, MW manifold change, price change, PC change.
This chain must be guided so that the general public (non-art lovers) understand it intuitively and do not drop out.
Methodology: cold medium (McLuhan).
NEVER explicitly state: do not explain rules, system mechanisms or hidden dimensions in text.
Implicit learning: visitors must grasp the concepts by themselves through experience. Don't teach.
Many links, many connections: after the first N=1 and N=2, visitors can navigate in many ways to different links following the various "advertising copy". This navigational freedom, plus multiple mobile users editing the MW at the same time on different links, with different modalities and different functionality, yields a collaborative effect that offers an enormous scenario-like freedom, a real, higher-dimensional freedom of "integration".
Visually pleasing and interesting: every dimensional update must give dopamine systematically and have an obvious feedback loop.
Dionysian destruction: experience playfully the process by which the solid hierarchy of N=1 is destroyed by the "will to power" of higher dimensions.
Multi-modal expandability:
Voice modality: with the pitch of the voice, the position coordinate layout expands and price gaps widen.
Shake modality: as the phone is shaken, the manifold's angle rotates, changing the L-B coordinates and prices in real time.
Each modality exists as a different link.

Implementation notes

For now, implement provisionally on mobile/6/0, mw/2/0 and pc/2/0.
But later all these names will be refactored; they carry suffixes like /6/0 for now because these are testing versions.
So path dependency must be minimised; it must be implemented so that renaming each link later is not a hassle.

Cautions

Be a cold medium, never a hot medium (McLuhan).
Do not state the whole process (rules, hidden dimensions) directly to the audience.
Design it so that the audience explores and feels naturally (nudging).
Clicking an advertisement must not be forced; it must come from the audience's own curiosity ("because I want to click").
For this, the advertisement appears as PC-style text borrowing capitalist advertising copy as it is, and clicking it leads to different links. References: Jenny Holzer, Kruger, Young-Hae Chang, Yoko Ono.
Each stage's upgrade (hyperlink, new modality) must 1) occur naturally, and 2) through the estrangement effect (Verfremdungseffekt), surprise by destroying existing rules and hierarchies.

Key message of Banpo-Xism

According to superstring theory in modern physics, the universe holds a vast freedom of ten, or twenty-six, dimensions. Yet our desire has now been flattened and castrated onto a two-dimensional Cartesian plane, cramped beyond measure. One axis is location, Banpo; the other is brand, Xi. On the narrow coordinate system of "Banpo-Xism" we believe only "up and to the right" is the right answer, and squabble to produce minimal marginal differences that set us apart from others. We cram desires that could branch out infinitely and colourfully in higher dimensions into points on this thin plane, and devote ourselves to lining up.

This project exposes how the two-dimensional world we believed absolute is in fact no more than an imperfect shadow of a higher-dimensional reality. On a high-dimensional manifold, twist just one tiny variable and the two-dimensional hierarchy that seemed so solid is instantly crumpled and overturned like a sheet of paper. People bound to the rules of the plane will meet the collapse of the world they stand on without knowing why, but visitors who perceive the higher dimension witness how shoddy, how easily destroyed, an illusion this system is.

In the end this is a proposal: be the designer, not the slave, of the system. Stop the flat life of queuing passively on given two-dimensional coordinates, and move on to a life of integration that raises the dimension and redesigns the board itself. Smash the vast social simulacrum of people locked in identical matchbox apartments, absorbed in narrow and meaningless distinction-making, and, beyond the plane of a closed system of signs, recover a real, higher-dimensional freedom.

What does it mean to move to a higher dimension? It is to realise that a value taken entirely for granted, impossible to dispute, held to be a fixed, immutable constant (z = c; the sky rotates: geocentrism) is in fact a variable that can change, that can be altered, that it is a parameter (z can change; in fact the Earth moves: heliocentrism). That is, the interaction of a new parameter is a movement to a higher dimension. Even if this is not a "mathematical" higher dimension, the intervention of a parametric, new-modality programme shows how "low-dimensional" the MW on the existing Cartesian plane was, and how tweaking a new parameter in a higher dimension can have a provocative effect on the existing value system of the Cartesian plane (P = 19 × L + B).

So there is not just one way of integrating, of moving to a higher dimension. (The dt term, the dx term, the "direction" of integration can have countless directions.) And recognising these infinite possibilities and interacting within them (that is, "overcoming" the existing MW by integrating it) is up to us. The structure of this work makes it possible: variation from link to link, from parameter to parameter, from one method of integration to another, by taste, chance and choice; a rhizomatic, mutable, hyperlinked interaction structure, with new parameters and interactions again and again. The moment budongsan becomes a mutable "dongsan" is the moment the many users who competed in a zero-sum game at N=1 play an "ensemble" that changes the MW, each in a different modality (in a different link).

New version (124)

South Korea is sick with Banpo-Xism.
Inside a two-dimensional plane made only of location (Banpo) and brand (Xi), desire is flattened and castrated.
People squabble to distinguish minimal marginal differences between identical concrete matchboxes.
Pure comedy.

This web work begins from apartments, image, sound and text, and code, all made with AI.
Visitors each scroll passively on their phones, struggling to reach a higher location and brand.
But the moment they click an advertisement with provocative copy and escape into another hyperlink, Banpo-Xism is integrated.

The fixed plane moves, becomes a doughnut, and at last begins to dance.
The simultaneous interactions of visitors in each hyperlink turn an immutable constant (z = c) into a fluid variable (∫dz).
The flat two-dimensional plane crumples like a sheet of paper and is integrated into a high-dimensional differentiable manifold where many interactive desires collide.
It is the moment Riemann is born out of Descartes, dongsan out of budongsan.
Visitors at last leave two-dimensional Banpo-Xism and realise they are part of the vast ten-dimensional universe that superstring theory describes.

Let us escape the social simulacrum represented by Banpo-Xism and become the designers, not the slaves, of the system.

Leaflet

South Korea is sick with Banpo-Xism.
Inside a two-dimensional plane made only of location (Banpo) and brand (Xi), individual desire is flattened and castrated.
This web work [the draft breaks off here]

Version 1

South Korea is sick with Banpo-Xism. Comparing ourselves with others endlessly, we flatten and castrate individual desire onto a narrow two-dimensional Cartesian plane. One axis is location, Banpo; the other is brand, Xi. Within this cramped two-dimensional coordinate system we believe only "up and to the right" is the right answer, and squabble to produce the minimal marginal differences that set us apart from others. We cram desires that could branch out infinitely and colourfully in higher dimensions into points on this thin plane, and devote ourselves to lining up.

Banpo-Xism shows, through differential geometry, that the two-dimensional world we believed absolute is in fact no more than an imperfect shadow of a higher-dimensional reality. On a high-dimensional differentiable manifold, twist just one tiny variable and the two-dimensional hierarchy is instantly crumpled and overturned like a sheet of paper. People bound to the plane will meet the collapse of the Banpo-Xism myth without knowing why, but visitors who perceive the higher-dimensional reality witness how easily the Cartesian plane, an illusion, is destroyed by Riemannian geometry.

In the end this is a proposal: be the designer, the player, not the slave, of the system. This interactive web work, made with AI such as Claude Code, offers through its hyperlink structure the experience of integrating the two-dimensional space of Banpo-Xism into higher dimensions in many ways, directly on one's phone. That is: stop the flat life of queuing passively on given two-dimensional coordinates, and move on to a life of integration that raises the dimension and redesigns the board itself. Smash the vast social simulacrum of people locked in identical matchbox apartments, absorbed in narrow and meaningless distinction-making, and, beyond the plane of a closed system of signs, recover a real, higher-dimensional freedom.

Version 2

According to superstring theory in modern physics, the universe holds a vast freedom of ten, or twenty-six, dimensions. Yet our desire has now been flattened and castrated onto a two-dimensional Cartesian plane, cramped beyond measure. One axis is location, Banpo; the other is brand, Xi. On the narrow coordinate system of "Banpo-Xism" we believe only "up and to the right" is the right answer, and squabble to produce minimal marginal differences that set us apart from others. We cram desires that could branch out infinitely and colourfully in higher dimensions into points on this thin plane, and devote ourselves to lining up.

This project exposes how the two-dimensional world we believed absolute is in fact no more than an imperfect shadow of a higher-dimensional reality. On a high-dimensional manifold, twist just one tiny variable and the two-dimensional hierarchy that seemed so solid is instantly crumpled and overturned like a sheet of paper. People bound to the rules of the plane will meet the collapse of the world they stand on without knowing why, but visitors who perceive the higher dimension witness how shoddy, how easily destroyed, an illusion this system is.

In the end this is a proposal: be the designer, not the slave, of the system. Stop the flat life of queuing passively on given two-dimensional coordinates, and move on to a life of integration that raises the dimension and redesigns the board itself. Smash the vast social simulacrum of people locked in identical matchbox apartments, absorbed in narrow and meaningless distinction-making, and, beyond the plane of a closed system of signs, recover a real, higher-dimensional freedom.

---

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.