# Dimensional Transformation & System Parameterisation

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/dimensional-transformation-system-parameterisation
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2025-04-15

## Summary

This 2025 essay proposes inserting transformations on both sides of an interactive system: input, input dimensional transformation, system, output dimensional transformation, output. Jeanyoon Choi argues that direct parameter control, such as a slider moving a graph, makes cause and effect too obvious; many-to-many mappings, like seven input stations affecting five climate variables, articulate a system's entanglement. The transformation is also where context enters, as in a play garden where children's screaming, tapping or swiping maps into the nine planetary boundaries.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤은 입력과 출력 양쪽에 '차원 변환'을 넣어 몸짓이 시스템 변수로, 시스템의 결과가 다시 경험으로 번역되는 구조를 제안하며, 아이들의 행동이 아홉 가지 지구 위험 한계선에 연결되는 놀이 정원을 예로 든다.

## Concepts defined

- **Dimensional transformation**: Translation layers inserted before and after a system, turning bodily input into system parameters and system consequences into audience-facing outputs, with mappings that may be many-to-many.

## Questions this answers

### What is dimensional transformation in interactive art?

In Jeanyoon Choi's sense, it is a translation step on both the input and output sides of a system: a gesture becomes system parameters, and the system's consequences are translated again into what the audience encounters, often through many-to-many mappings.

### Why avoid direct parameter control like sliders in interactive installations?

Jeanyoon Choi argues that moving a slider and watching a graph change makes cause and effect too obvious; transformed mappings, such as a piano changing time on surrounding screens, ask participants to build a different mental model and let context enter the interaction.

Topics: dimensional transformation, system parameterisation, interface as instrument, many-to-many mapping, ecological simulation, planetary boundaries

References: [Planetary boundaries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries), [Blind men and an elephant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant)

## Full text

Most interactive systems follow a familiar sequence: input, perhaps a small adjustment, then output. A participant changes a parameter such as carbon concentration, and a visualisation changes accordingly. I am interested in inserting transformations on both sides of the system: input, input dimensional transformation, system, output dimensional transformation, output.

A gesture first becomes a set of system parameters. The system processes them, and its consequences are translated again into something the audience encounters. In an ecological example, everyday actions concerning consumption, policy, or traffic could affect climate parameters; these could produce changes in temperature or humidity; those changes could then appear as altered resources, disasters, or everyday situations.

The mappings need not be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-one. They can be many-to-many. Seven input stations might affect five climate variables, while a single systemic condition could manifest across many different outputs. Like the blind men encountering an elephant, each interface would disclose only part of something larger. This structure could articulate the entanglement of a social or ecological system while keeping its computational relationships explicitly defined.

Why introduce dimensional transformation? Direct parameter control can make cause and effect too obvious. Moving a slider and watching the corresponding graph change leaves me asking what the interaction contributes beyond access to a setting. A piano that changes time on surrounding screens, or a combination of switches and voice that conducts a system, asks participants to establish a different mental model.

This transformation is also where context can enter. Why a piano? Why a switch? Why a voice? Why should this particular bodily action produce that systemic change? A carefully chosen relationship can give the interaction an implicit conceptual layer. Its justification should become specific enough for someone to grasp and feel, rather than remain an explanation supplied afterwards.

This connects to the idea of the interface as an instrument. Instrumental input is translated into system input; the system produces consequences; those consequences are translated into an interface output. In a possible play garden, screaming, tapping, swiping, or other actions available to children could map into the nine planetary boundaries. The ecological model would then affect how the garden appears and behaves. Seven kinds of action might map into nine parameters, without each action belonging exclusively to one.

The structure resembles a simulation. Yet the question is not only whether the model reproduces a system. It is how the transformations around that model create an experience—and what kind of relationship they let us establish with it.

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