# Perceivable Experience vs. Non-perceivable Experience

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/perceivable-experience-vs-non-perceivable-experience
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2024-08-14

## Summary

In this 2024 essay, Jeanyoon Choi notes that perception has upper and lower thresholds, while hyperobjects and the systems he addresses exceed any single viewpoint. He argues that art need not always offer legible, plausible experiences, which can lead to kitsch, and proposes a crafted 'perceivable non-perceivability': enough coherence to invite someone in, then an experience that reveals its limits. User interfaces ordinarily package raw information into readable form, blurring visualising and falsifying; the brutal interface instead exposes underlying construction. The note links this to a proposed KAIST opening work.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤은 인간 지각의 한계와 하이퍼오브젝트를 다루며, 예술이 늘 이해 가능한 경험만 제공할 필요는 없고 '지각 가능한 비지각성'을 섬세하게 설계할 수 있다고 주장한다.

## Concepts defined

- **Perceivable non-perceivability**: A carefully constructed balance in which an experience is coherent enough to invite participation yet ultimately exposes the limits of comprehension.
- **Brutal interface**: An interface that exposes the raw construction beneath it rather than packaging information into a fully human-readable form.

## Questions this answers

### What does Jeanyoon Choi mean by 'perceivable non-perceivability'?

It is an experience designed with enough coherence to invite participants in, followed by an encounter that makes the limits of that coherence apparent, so that they meet the incomprehensible systems they already live in.

### Why might an artwork deliberately exceed what viewers can perceive?

Jeanyoon Choi argues that hyperobjects cannot be fully grasped from a single human viewpoint, and that always offering legible, desirable experiences risks kitsch; an artwork can instead let people encounter that incomprehensibility.

Topics: perception thresholds, hyperobject, brutal interface, user interface, cognitive load, information overload

References: [Hyperobject](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperobject), [Psychophysics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychophysics), [KAIST](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAIST)

## Full text

Perception has limits. There are upper and lower thresholds to what we can see, hear and process, and therefore many ways to construct an experience that exceeds them: greater density, greater speed, more simultaneous information.

The systems I want to address do not operate according to those perceptual limits. A hyperobject cannot be made fully available to a single human viewpoint. We encounter parts of a vast ecological or social formation and reach the limit of our ability to grasp it.

An artwork therefore need not always offer an immediately legible, plausible or desirable experience. That demand can produce kitsch. It can instead let participants encounter the incomprehensible conditions in which they already live.

This requires careful construction. Starting with undifferentiated chaos can close the encounter before it begins. I want a perceivable non-perceivability: enough coherence to invite someone in, followed by an experience that makes the limits of that coherence apparent. The paradox is part of the work.

A user interface ordinarily does the reverse. It processes raw information—too fast, too extensive or too intricate to apprehend directly—into a human-readable form. That packaging makes the world manageable, but it also changes what is presented. Visualising, communicating and, at times, falsifying can become difficult to separate.

The brutal interface interests me because it exposes something of that underlying construction rather than completing the package. It remains a direction to investigate.

For the proposed KAIST opening work, I was considering the intensity of continuously generated text, numbers and informational waste. The original note stops at that question of intensity; the specific experience was still unresolved.

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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.