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Jeanyoon Choi (b.1999) is a Computational Artist researching in interconnectivity and complexity through Multi-Device Web Artworks.

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jeanyoon.ch@oi /oi % cat system-art-module-layout-and-layers

System Art: Module - Layout and Layers

2025-04-15

When I imagine system art composed of multiple modules, I often begin with a grid. Each square contains an agent, profile, component, or subsystem. It is intuitive and easy to organise. But the grid should be a starting point, not a limit.

Even grids can vary. Units can have unequal sizes, expand unpredictably, or change scale, as in ≠. Repeated marks at different levels suggest another direction, with Lee Ufan's From Point as a reference. Overlapping browser windows can create a more unsettled arrangement. Circular compositions, spatial maps, and rhizomatic connections offer other ways to distribute modules. A collage could place them on different layers, at different scales, allowing a pattern to emerge through apparent disorder.

In three dimensions, the possibilities extend to cubes, cylinders, spheres, hemispheres, spirals, and a panoptic arrangement with its social implications. Layouts could become hyperbolic or deconstructed rather than remain regular containers.

My earlier works already approached these questions. Chronology arranged twelve clocks through twelve configurations, including curved and hyperbolic forms. There could be many more, and the transition between layouts is itself significant. In ≠, a line expands into a grid. Each unit has local states, while the work also has a global condition. Even this modest distinction allows a kind of system dynamics to become visible.

Ω begins with a cylindrical arrangement that breaks apart when the audience shakes a phone. Its composition has two levels: elements organised around a circular row, and rows assembled into a larger structure. I want to explore how deconstruction can be generated algorithmically, how its parameters can remain interactive, and how much of its territory remains unexplored.

For a multi-device web artwork, composition also operates between screens. Modules form a layer; several layers form another; these can be organised again at a larger scale. Conceptually, the chain could even return to the module, although I do not yet know how fully such a circular structure could be realised.

Imagine each device divided into four units, each unit divided into four again. What remains similar within a level, and what changes between levels? How could those differences be designed precisely? A rapidly changing collection of junk websites, drawing on the third movement of Symphony of Civilisation, suggests another experiment in layered composition.

Each module may follow its own mechanism or algorithm. When modules accumulate across layers and devices, a different aesthetic becomes perceptible. This is why layout matters: the whole cannot be understood simply by listing its parts. A collage can be generated systematically while appearing disorderly, or remain orderly while allowing unpredictable local activity.

I think again of the cars crossing Hannam Bridge. Every driver has an individual purpose. Seen from above, their journeys become a flow, a movement of capital, something resembling a living urban organism. Composition lets us move between those scales of perception.

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