# My Interpretation of Hyperobject: Accelerating Interactionn

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/my-interpretation-of-hyperobject-accelerating-interactionn
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2024-07-16

## Summary

In this 2024 essay, Jeanyoon Choi interprets a hyperobject as something we initiate and believe we control, such as financial markets, climate change or neural networks, until it exceeds us. He calls his formal response accelerating interaction, pursued in W, Nonequality, Bigger Dreams and Factory 4.0. A sketch uses one phone and one screen: verbs from 'To Press' to 'To Scroll', 'To Face ID' and 'To EEG' cycle ever faster until the system triggers itself, describing digital interaction's drift toward passivity. It cites Richard Serra's Verb List and Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤은 하이퍼오브젝트를 우리가 시작하고 통제한다고 믿다가 결국 통제를 벗어나는 것으로 해석하고, 단순한 동작이 점점 빨라져 스스로 작동하게 되는 '가속하는 인터랙션'으로 이를 형상화한다.

## Concepts defined

- **Accelerating interaction**: Jeanyoon Choi's interaction design in which a subtle, simple action gradually accelerates into chaos, giving form to how systems we initiate come to exceed our control.

## Questions this answers

### How does Jeanyoon Choi interpret the hyperobject?

He describes a hyperobject as something that starts in our hands and seems controllable, like financial markets, climate change or neural networks, until we realise, often too late, that it has exceeded our control.

### What is 'accelerating interaction' in Jeanyoon Choi's work?

It is an interaction design in which a small, understandable action gradually produces chaos. He names W, Nonequality, Bigger Dreams and Factory 4.0 as works that pursue variations of it.

### How can an artwork show digital interaction becoming more passive?

Jeanyoon Choi sketches a phone prompting verbs that shift from active ones like To Press and To Send to passive ones like To Scroll, To Face ID and To EEG, while cycles shrink from eight seconds to one until the system runs itself.

Topics: hyperobject, accelerating interaction, accelerationism, algorithmic culture, multi-device web artwork, passive interaction

References: [Hyperobject](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperobject), W, ≠ (Nonequality), Bigger Dreams, Factory 4.0, [Richard Serra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Serra), Verb List, [Martha Rosler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Rosler), Semiotics of the Kitchen

## Full text

My interpretation of a hyperobject begins with something in our hands. We initiate it, operate it and believe it remains within our control. Then, often only after the decisive moment has passed, we discover that it has exceeded us. Financial markets, climate change and neural networks suggest different versions of this condition.

Accelerating interaction is one way I try to give that transition a form. A small, understandable action gradually produces chaos. I have pursued variations of it in W, Nonequality, Bigger Dreams and Factory 4.0. My inclination is to affirm and play with that chaos rather than deny it by insisting that human reason—or a mathematical description—must render it completely manageable.

A simple sketch: one phone and one screen. The phone says ‘To Press’. Pressing reveals and plays a video; releasing makes it disappear. The response should arrive with a sudden, unexpected force. After roughly eight seconds, the instruction changes: To Click, To Write, To Send.

As the sequence develops, active verbs give way to increasingly passive forms of digital interaction: To See, To Blink, To Scroll, To Swipe, To Face ID, To Siri, To EEG. Meanwhile, each cycle contracts from eight seconds towards one. Eventually the system triggers its own inputs and videos before the participant can register what is happening. Images overlap and the sequence runs itself.

The sketch concerns the movement of digital interaction towards passivity and the subconscious, including the promises attached to brain interfaces. What once appeared to be a field of deliberate choices becomes an environment in which algorithms guide what we see and how we respond. The participant initiates the system, then finds themselves inside its momentum.

References for the vocabulary of action: Richard Serra’s Verb List and Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen.

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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.