# System Art: The age of Generated-Automated System

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/system-art-the-age-of-generated-automated-system
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2025-02-08

## Summary

Jeanyoon Choi argues that making ever-running financial, educational, academic and technical systems perceptible is a task for contemporary artists, citing Hans Haacke and Sarah Sze. He links automation to time, with the clock as its basic image, and wants to explore the aesthetic of an actual automated system, like a multi-device casino, suggested by the third movement of The Symphony of Civilisation. With language models, systems can generate further systems, as in Junk Site. He proposes node-like structures carrying social contexts, adjusted through dimensional transformation, and asks how models might generate the relationships themselves.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤은 멈추지 않는 금융·교육·기술 시스템을 감각화하는 것을 현대 예술가의 과제로 보고, 언어 모델로 콘텐츠가 아닌 시스템 자체를 생성하는 '생성-자동화 시스템'의 미학을 탐구한다.

## Questions this answers

### What does Jeanyoon Choi mean by the 'age of generated-automated systems'?

He means a condition in which systems run continuously beyond any participant's control, and in which language models can now generate systems, and perhaps systems that generate further systems, rather than only content.

### How could an artwork let participants adjust a social system's parameters?

In this essay Jeanyoon Choi suggests a simple slider or scroll made consequential through dimensional transformation, such as an interest-rate adjustment whose effects reshape a larger environment immediately or with delay.

Topics: system art, automation, time, language models, node-based systems, dimensional transformation, hyperobject

References: [Hans Haacke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Haacke), [Sarah Sze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Sze), The Symphony of Civilisation, Junk Site

## Full text

We live inside systems that do not stop. Financial, educational, academic and technical systems continue to operate beyond the understanding or control of any one participant. Making their presence perceptible is an important task for a contemporary artist. Hans Haacke and Sarah Sze are among the references I return to.

Automation is also a relation to time. A system repeats, completes a cycle and begins another. As it develops, those cycles can accelerate. The clock is a basic image of this condition: standardised time makes duration measurable, and measurable duration becomes something to optimise.

I want to explore the aesthetic of an actual automated system, rather than a moving image representing one. A multi-device environment could feel like a gigantic casino: channels progressing, cycling and updating without waiting for us. The third movement of The Symphony of Civilisation begins to suggest this.

Language models add another layer. We can generate systems, and perhaps generate systems that generate further systems. Junk Site is one example. The object of attention is no longer only automated content, but the proliferation of automated structures.

Building such a work has a resemblance to a node-based environment. Nodes have parameters; connections determine how changes propagate. But the output need not be an abstract audiovisual composition. It could concern financial markets, education, transport, dating, applications or military organisation. A similar computational structure can carry a very different social context.

One possible interaction lets participants adjust system parameters. A simple slider or scroll becomes consequential through dimensional transformation: a modest gesture changes a relationship whose effects may be immediate or delayed. The earlier interest-rate proposal is an example of a small adjustment reshaping a larger environment.

The unresolved question is how to generate the system itself. Could I provide a set of input parameters and ask a model to construct relationships among them? Could many such subsystems form a larger structure? The nature of the work would then emerge from the generated relations, not just from generated images or sentences.

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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.