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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 hacking-systems-more-primitive-than-a-game

Hacking Systems: More Primitive than a Game

2024-04-13

At an Ian Cheng exhibition in Seoul, the intended story did not engage me. What did engage me was discovering how to play with its interface. A single touch produced information I found uninteresting. Repeated tapping and pinching layered sounds and rapidly changed the image. The interaction became compelling when I stopped using it as intended.

The same happened with video controls. Repeatedly jumping ten seconds forwards and backwards produced an erratic audiovisual rhythm. The useful control became material for play.

A possible formula: a logical system provides a logical interaction, but repetition pushes that interaction into an illogical register. Logical interaction × 100 taps per second = illogical interaction.

I recognise this in my own work. Entering a website is ordinary; being made to press Enter twenty times turns it into an absurd action. Taking an MBTI test is ordinary; scrolling through an exaggerated page to reach an answer changes the experience. A generated conversation can appear coherent until a participant’s facial expression distorts it. A predictable video becomes something else through incessant repetition and temporal fragmentation.

This resembles accelerationism, but it also reaches beneath the formal structure of a game. Before rules, scoring or narrative, there is the desire to prod a system, discover its limits and make it behave strangely.

I remember an installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale where playful interaction was discouraged. I suspect a more permissive system would have been more engaging than slowly delivering its prescribed content. This is my response as a participant, rather than a claim about every visitor.

Hack the system. More precisely: hack an established interactive system through playful, Dadaist use. Tap, scroll, pinch, repeat.

Sound is essential here. Without carefully designed sonic feedback, rapid interaction can remain a mechanical action rather than become a satisfying audiovisual play.

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