# Real-Time Archiving Art

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/real-time-archiving-art
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2024-04-18

## Summary

This essay asks how the sum of many small actions differs from each action alone, and how a real-time archive could make that difference perceptible. Jeanyoon Choi imagines live displays of mobile coffee orders or deliveries as portraits of platform-economy consumption, citing Andreas Gursky's Frankfurt photographs and cars crossing Hannam Bridge. He extends the idea to two earlier sketches, Scream Propagation and Stress Propagation, in which anonymous screams or strikes on a sensor-equipped object are sent via WebSocket to shared screens, proposing collective expression without personal confession.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤의 에세이로, 모바일 커피 주문이나 배달처럼 개인의 작은 행위가 실시간으로 집계·시각화될 때 전체가 어떻게 다르게 보이는지 묻고, 익명의 비명과 스트레스를 공공 화면으로 전송하는 Scream Propagation과 Stress Propagation 구상을 소개한다.

## Concepts defined

- **Real-Time Archiving Art**: An artwork that aggregates and displays many individual actions as they happen, so that an archive is created and shared live and the visible whole changes the experience of contributing a part.

## Questions this answers

### What does Jeanyoon Choi mean by 'real-time archiving art'?

In 'Real-Time Archiving Art', it is an archive made and shared as events happen rather than stored afterwards: aggregated individual actions, such as orders or anonymous screams, displayed live so the whole changes how one perceives one's own part.

### What are Scream Propagation and Stress Propagation?

They are two sketches described in Jeanyoon Choi's essay. In Scream Propagation a scream into a phone reaches a shared screen as an abstract audiovisual response; in Stress Propagation strikes on a soft, keyboard-like object with an embedded sensor send WebSocket signals to a screen in a lobby or exhibition.

### How can an artwork let people express stress anonymously?

Jeanyoon Choi proposes a multi-device artwork where someone's scream enters a public space elsewhere without revealing who they are, so expression becomes collective without a personal confession.

Topics: real-time archive, data visualisation, platform economy, collective expression, anonymity, multi-device web artwork, websocket

References: [Andreas Gursky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Gursky), [Hannam Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannam_Bridge), [WebSocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSocket), Scream Propagation, Stress Propagation

## Full text

How does the sum of many small actions differ from each action considered alone? How might a real-time archive make that difference visible or audible—and how would seeing the whole change the experience of contributing a part?

Imagine a live display of mobile coffee orders. Orders that seem occasional from one customer’s perspective occur continuously across a large network. A map, or a more abstract audiovisual field, could register them as they arrive. Delivery services suggest a similar structure.

These are portraits of technologically mediated convenience and everyday consumption. An individual makes a seemingly reasonable choice; the aggregate becomes enormous, perhaps chaotic. I imagine something like watching a fire, but for the activity of a platform economy. Andreas Gursky’s Frankfurt photographs come to mind: a magnified view of the whole changes our perception of the part. Watching endless cars cross Hannam Bridge produces a related sensation.

Two earlier ideas extend this towards expression rather than consumption. In Scream Propagation, someone screams into a phone and the event reaches a shared screen. An abstract audiovisual response registers an anonymous scream somewhere in the world.

In Stress Propagation, a large, soft, keyboard-like object can be struck. An embedded sensor sends a WebSocket signal to a screen in a lobby or exhibition. Each strike produces a response and joins a live record of other strikes.

These sketches ask whether expression can become collective without demanding a personal confession. In a strongly individualised society, everyday frustration is often kept private. My notes connect this isolation to a wider concern about distress in Korea; that is a motivation for the work, not evidence that an installation could resolve it.

We may not want to explain our stress to people close to us, yet still want to express it somewhere. Anonymous communities suggest that tension. A multi-device artwork could let someone know that their scream has entered a public space without revealing who they are. They would not know the particular person receiving it, only that it can be encountered in another lobby, exhibition or part of the world.

That is a poetic possibility of web technology: an archive that is not simply stored after an event, but made and shared as events happen.

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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.