# Resting is part of the Data - Resting is part of the Art

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/resting-is-part-of-the-data-resting-is-part-of-the-art
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2025-02-07

## Summary

Jeanyoon Choi argues that hyper-personalisation reduces a person to a point in a vector space and that connected devices now extend data collection into sleep and rest. He proposes a resting area of beanbag, monitor, camera, computer and speakers: when a tired exhibition visitor sits, a camera triggers a welcome, a system leads the conversation, offers resting imagery to disengaged visitors and checks on them after a few minutes, while analysing eyes, mouth and expression. Referencing Andy Warhol's Sleep, the work makes both engagement and refusal generate data.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤은 초개인화가 개인을 벡터 공간의 한 점으로 환원하며 수면과 휴식까지 데이터화한다고 보고, 전시장 빈백 휴식 공간에서 AI 시스템이 관람객의 휴식과 망설임까지 데이터와 작품의 일부로 만드는 설치를 제안한다.

## Questions this answers

### What is 'Resting is part of the Data - Resting is part of the Art' by Jeanyoon Choi?

It is an essay and installation proposal for a resting area in an exhibition where a camera-triggered, conversation-leading system welcomes and observes a tired visitor, so that the visitor's attempt to take a break becomes data and part of the artwork.

### How does data collection extend into rest and sleep?

Jeanyoon Choi notes that leisure is part of economic circulation and data production, and that sleep technology and personal assistants encourage people to ask what the optimal way to rest is, turning rest into material for classification.

Topics: hyper-personalisation, data collection, rest, sleep technology, ai agents, interactive installation, surveillance

References: [Andy Warhol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol), [Sleep (1964 film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_(1964_film))

## Full text

Hyper-personalisation can mean reducing a person to a point in a vector space. Like a personality type, a diagnosis or a category of legal case, that point becomes a way for a system to recognise and handle an individual through accumulated data.

The more thoroughly everyday life enters networked services, the more material becomes available for that classification. Connected devices extend the process into areas once treated as private, including sleep and rest.

Rest is supposed to be a break: go offline, stop working, withdraw. Yet leisure is also part of economic circulation and data production. Sleep technology and personal assistants offer to optimise it. We begin asking—or are encouraged to ask—what the optimal way to rest would be. Even contemporary art can extend its claim into spaces that once seemed outside the work.

I propose a resting area made from a beanbag, monitor, camera, computer and speakers, with the digital components initially as unobtrusive as possible. A tired exhibition visitor approaches what seems to be a break from art. The work incorporates that break.

Before someone sits, the screen is black and the speakers silent. A few seconds after a camera detects their presence, a welcome begins. The participant may be puzzled, mumble or say almost nothing. Unlike a conventional assistant waiting for a clear request, this system leads the exchange and maintains its own conversational context.

An engaged visitor’s responses feed the wider system. A disengaged visitor is offered resting or sleeping imagery. After two or three minutes, the service asks whether everything is all right, with the solicitous manner of a restaurant checking on a customer.

Meanwhile, the proposed work records and analyses the resting visitor—eyes, mouth and expression become parameters. Andy Warhol’s Sleep is a reference for attending to that apparently uneventful duration.

Both engagement and refusal generate something. Rest becomes data; hesitation becomes data. The participant’s attempt to step outside the exhibition becomes another part of the artwork and its system.

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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.