# Integration of real-world api/real-world data & Collaged Collective World

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/integration-of-real-world-api-real-world-data-collaged-collective-world
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2024-08-14

## Summary

In this 2024 note, Jeanyoon Choi considers the value of live external material in art, citing Nam June Paik's early Wuppertal exhibition and Cildo Meireles's Babel. He distinguishes genuinely live sources, such as broadcasts or transport data, from real-time calls to a language model, and contrasts them with the simulated APIs of the third movement of Civilisation. He imagines a collective, collage-like canvas, after Basquiat or Twombly, whose regions respond to different live systems, but questions whether such a collage is justified and connects it to the idea of a naked interface.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤은 백남준의 부퍼탈 전시와 실도 메이렐레스의 『Babel』을 참조해 실시간 외부 데이터와 API를 멀티 디바이스 웹 아트워크에 통합하는 방안을 고민하며, 현대 세계를 콜라주한 하나의 캔버스를 구상한다.

## Concepts defined

- **Naked interface**: An interface that does not simplify the world for convenient use, but exposes its workings without smoothing them away.

## Questions this answers

### Why does Jeanyoon Choi want to use live real-world data in multi-device web artworks?

He notes that live signals, as in Nam June Paik's use of broadcast television, create a relation to events outside the work that differs from generating responses with a language model, and the web makes such external sources unusually accessible.

### What is the 'collaged collective world' idea?

It is a proposed canvas in which different regions respond independently to different live systems, such as health, finance, conversation and location, while coexisting in one composition. Jeanyoon Choi leaves open what would justify combining these particular systems.

Topics: real-time data, live apis, multi-device web artwork, collage, naked interface, data-driven art

References: [Nam June Paik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_June_Paik), [Cildo Meireles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cildo_Meireles), Babel (Cildo Meireles), [Jean-Michel Basquiat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Michel_Basquiat), [Cy Twombly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cy_Twombly), [Broadway Boogie Woogie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_Boogie_Woogie), [Times Square](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Square), [Rafael Lozano-Hemmer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Lozano-Hemmer), The Symphony of Civilisation

## Full text

I keep returning to the importance of live material. In my notes on Nam June Paik’s early Wuppertal exhibition, the limited hours of television broadcasting mattered because he was transforming a signal arriving from outside the work. Cildo Meireles’s Babel offers another powerful encounter with the accumulation of radio and popular culture.

The web makes external, changing sources unusually accessible. That differs from calling a language model in real time: an immediate generated response is not necessarily a live connection to an event outside the system. Broadcasts, transport data and other current signals introduce a different relation to the world.

The third movement of Civilisation explored a version of this through simulated APIs. That was useful as a speculative graphic reflection, but I want to investigate what a genuinely live connection would change. What can the repetition, randomness and cyclicality of MDWA contribute?

I imagine a collective painting, with something of the collage-like energy of Basquiat or Twombly. Different regions of a canvas could respond independently to different parts of contemporary life while continuing to coexist in one composition. Each region would operate as part of an ecosystem.

A language-model brainstorming session supplied possible sources: television, radio, social media and streaming; weather, pollution and seismic activity; road traffic, public transport, flights and shipping; live chats and translations; stock prices and cryptocurrency transactions; bodily measurements and public-health data; GPS positions, geofencing and location-based AR. It also proposed familiar applications such as data-driven stories, responsive architecture, live soundscapes and changing public murals.

Those suggestions felt too generic. Connecting a sensor or feed to an output is not enough. What would justify bringing several of these sources together?

Perhaps different parts of a canvas could combine health, finance, conversation and location. Each part might have its own QR code and mobile interface. Entering a trading interface, for example, could alter the financial region, though perhaps indirectly rather than as an immediate literal response.

But what would that interaction mean? Would the production effort exceed the conceptual value? Why collage these particular systems? What political or artistic proposition would their combination make?

I do not want a collection of feeds that merely announces that the world is complicated. I want the relations between them to produce something beyond the sum of the parts: perhaps an incomprehensible Times Square compressed into one canvas, perhaps a contemporary Broadway Boogie-Woogie.

This connects to the naked interface: an interface that does not simplify the world for convenient use, but exposes its workings without smoothing them away. The questions remain open.

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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.