# Semantic Interaction: Dimensional Transformation

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/semantic-interaction-dimensional-transformation
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2025-02-08

## Summary

Jeanyoon Choi addresses a recurring problem in interactive art: visitors facing an empty text field or voice prompt rarely know what to contribute, while movement-based interaction tends to stay confined to abstract audiovisual control. He proposes dimensional transformation, in which a low-demand bodily action is registered as coordinates or parameters and mapped into another domain, such as an x-y position becoming a relation between time and money. Familiar web gestures like scrolling or pressing a button can offer an easy entry, but the decisive artistic task is imagining the relationship between input and output domains.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤은 전시 관람객이 텍스트·음성 입력 앞에서 무엇을 말해야 할지 모르는 문제를 지적하고, 쉬운 몸동작이나 스크롤 같은 비의미적 입력을 다른 의미 영역으로 사상하는 '차원 변환'을 제안한다.

## Concepts defined

- **Dimensional Transformation**: Registering a low-demand bodily or interface action as coordinates or parameters and mapping it into a different, socially or conceptually meaningful domain, so a nonsemantic input yields a semantic output.

## Questions this answers

### What is dimensional transformation in Jeanyoon Choi's essay on semantic interaction?

It is mapping a simple, nonsemantic action, registered as coordinates or parameters, into another, meaningful domain, so that participants discover meaning through the consequences of an easy gesture.

### Why do visitors struggle with text or voice input in interactive installations?

In 'Semantic Interaction: Dimensional Transformation', Jeanyoon Choi observes that entering an unfamiliar exhibition does not prepare someone to contribute a considered statement, so many type an arbitrary word or say little.

Topics: semantic interaction, dimensional transformation, interaction design, new media art, nonsemantic input, web interfaces

## Full text

Semantic interaction presents a recurring problem. Faced with an empty text field, a visitor may not know what to write. I often respond with an arbitrary word myself. Voice interfaces face the same difficulty: entering an unfamiliar exhibition does not make someone ready to contribute a considered statement.

Movement-based interactions avoid much of that demand. A body, face or gesture can influence a work without requiring an explicit linguistic contribution. But I do not want their effects to remain confined to abstract audiovisual control. How can a low-demand action open onto a socially or conceptually meaningful situation?

One possibility is dimensional transformation. A bodily action is registered as coordinates or parameters, then mapped into another domain. An x–y position, for example, could become a relation between time and money rather than remain a spatial position. The participant can discover meaning through the consequence of the action.

Everyday web interfaces already do something related. We sometimes scroll simply for the gesture itself, then encounter content as a result. A relatively nonsemantic input produces a semantic output. A familiar button, feed or scrollable interface may therefore offer a more natural entry into the work than an empty field demanding an original contribution.

The input is easy to perform, but it already belongs to a recognisable situation. Its consequences can then appear across the surrounding devices. The work does not have to choose between a purely abstract bodily input and a demanding language task.

The decisive artistic question is the transformation between domains. What unexpected relationship connects the familiar input to the output world? That relationship cannot be supplied by technical tracking alone; it requires artistic imagination.

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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.