displaced and rendered 2012



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The imposition of simplistic viral and exaptive instructions on the memes of existing forms with significant memes for the emergence of complex forms.

Cultural forms such as films, music, paintings and photographs that the artist comes across become the basis of the "existing forms" above. And the selected works have strong memes (cultural genes), or units of cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another.

In animal genes, including human’s, viral genomes are bookended by regions known as long terminal repeats (LTRs), which contain an array of sequences capable of controlling not just viral genes but the host ones as well. And this is where the exaptive nature of the artist's intervention comes in.

Exaptation is a term coined by Stephen Jay Gould to describe the shifts in the function of a trait during evolution, in which the function was not inherent in the trait. Feathers were evolved to provide insulation for the animal, then co-opted for display, and eventually this is co-opted for flying.

The conceptual seed of the viral implementation is simple enough for each work – for instance, ‘slashing’ digitally, automatically manipulating photographs, censoring the text with colour encryption, making a panorama using a continuous space in film, and comparing two very similar films by superimposing them. In the study of artificial life, emergence is a central idea.

Relatively simple microscale parts interact each other to form complex material systems. Emergence is the appearance of complexity from the multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. When the viral command exapts the memetic works, a new form emerges. This is the resulting work for Hyo Myoung Kim.

Lives and works in London, UK.

Hyo Myoung Kim