KJC Korea
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This study aims to examine the main issues of photography regarding digital technology. If the photography in the analog era depends on the concept of ‘document’, ‘record’, ‘reel’, ‘trace’, etc., the photo in the digital era is explained by the concept of ‘simulacrum’, ‘fiction’, ‘virtuality’, etc. We know that these concepts are incompatibles. So, the photograph don't have the classic position of trace of reel in the digital era so-called ‘post-photography’. Accordingly, main questions of theory of photography require a modification. The core is the theory of index that led the discussion about photography since 1980'. This theory was, in fact, predominant in the analog ara, but has a apparent limit. There is two viewpoints which admit this limit : the one accept partially the theory of index. According to this, digital photo is not different, ‘intrinsically’, from analog photo. The other that admit a fundamental difference of both sides call for revision of index paradigm. In principle, analog is continuous(resemblance), digital is discontinuous(difference). But, resemblance and difference are, ultimately, not sameness. That is inherent quality of all photographic image(analog, digital). The theory of index had a compulsive impulse to determine the specificity of photography. But, even if a photograph has some characteristic of index, it can not be identified to index. Rather it has various characteristic of image. Thus simulacrum of post-photography is not originally new. Therefore, we can suggest, according to the thought of Bazin, as follows : if the painting is liberated from compulsion of realism by the invention of photography, the photography is liberated from compulsion of index by digital technology.

This essay explores the reception and aesthetic symptoms of contemporary digital photography from the perspective of the change and extension of human perception. I explore photographic images that cross such concepts as reality and its copies, reality and virtuality, real and surreal, simulacra and simulation, and conscious and unconscious mind. I analyze them through the surrealist’s aesthetic of spacing, photographic shock and (de)sublimation, and the representation of landscapes of absence. Finally, I argue that the longing for surrealism in contemporary art is the expression of the desire to resolve the paradox between the given reality and Dasein by concentrating on subversive fantasy and virtual reality.

This paper deals with ‘the aesthetic turn of social documentary’ that has been a noticeable phenomenon in the recent art world. Represented by artists such as Luc Delahaye, Juul Hondious, Richard Mosse and Jim Goldberg, this new turn of documentary is characterized by the frequent use of digital technologies and other aesthetic measures (pictorial composition, appealing color and size, etc.) that provide a deeper visual experience on political disasters around the world. It challenges documentary's dubious myth of objectivity and authenticity by accepting all the post-protocols nurtured in digital paradigms; thus it deserves the name, ‘post-documentary’ as a new terrain of photographic art in this digital era. Post-documentary's inter-subjective, immersive, and virtual (or ‘poetic’) experiences construct a new spectatorship that subsumes both political awareness and aesthetic pleasure. Philosopher Jacques Rancière's notion　‘the distribution of the sensible’ and his claims on the fundamental unity between the aesthetic regime and the political regime will be discussed in the paper to ensure post-documentary's sensorial appeal and its interdisciplinary role between art and politics. Critic Michael Fried's new photo-theory will also be discussed as the theory, despite its explicit modernist and aesthetic stands, elaborates the inseparable connection between a photographic image and its viewer. Although seemingly irrelevant, the two theorists make a harmonizing voice in their discussion of theatre: for both, it is a space of ‘emancipation’ where the spectator ― ‘ignorant, disinterested’ ― finds its genuine potentials in the world of image. With this theoretical frame, this paper aims to map out a new direction of documentary art that would bring all the previously unmediated fields ― art, politics and ethics ― together.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how and with what effects the death photography is used in media. The death photography represents a social conflict in a certain perspective by inflicting emotional impact to mass. It gives a symbolic meaning to the conflict and becomes a kind of icon which can have a big influence on the situation. By representing victims of violence, the death photography demands our critical reflexivity and ethical responsibility. It urges us to intervene politically to solve the problems. The sudden encounter with death photograph of other people, victims of violences, stimulate a strong emotional reaction. The density of this emotional reaction is determined by the aesthetic composition of the photograph and by the physical, psychological gap. This emotional reaction makes us enter into an ethical, political field which is different from the everyday life field.

Paldaesanin(1626-1705) was born in the early Qing Dynasty in the late Ming Dynasty and lived a life of blindness. In the ruins of the war, the Paldaesanin who was a royal family from Myeong, embarked on the escape of the enemy and the new dynasty Qing, Because of this, I have become a lunatic many times. And in his strange behavior and drunkenness, he expressed his mind mainly in flowers and birds, and expressed insanely and strangely. And he created his own unique style with jumbled madness and strange lines, and he was especially influenced by Chuangtzu's artistic spirit, which symbolized the liberation spirit of clear and empty clean mind as ‘Yu’. It is probably related to several changes in his refracted life, and the madness and aesthetics with intense rebellious spirit, progressive emotion, intense personality, Became the basic feature of Paldaesanin's Muninhwa. Paldaesanin's Muninhwa of artistic landscape on Crazy and Weird is a representation of his inner insanity on paper, which is characterized by the beauty of the outside of the image through the blank or incomplete space, the beauty of the aesthetic spirit such as forgetting the image of the object and getting the meaning. The objective object corresponding to the haeuibanbak was selected and the premise of unity with self was set. And pursued the state of extreme beauty, a great technique of equivalent to simplicity, Based on the detailed observation of the subject, intuitive and immediate attention is expressed in the form of balmuksseonyeom method. In the simplicity of the script, the realness of the material is fully captured and exhilarated with the life and dynamism of the object, ‘A brief representation of complexity’ to the formative beauty. This Muninhwa art was his only refuge and liberation, expressing dissatisfaction with his uncompleted mind in the real world and expressing it against animals. The quality of his original art, which has been maintained in such a fierce rebellion and madness of the world, is rather a metaphysical state of “real painter” mentioned by Chuangtzu, a become enlightened of painting without any style or technique, no dependence of Comfortably abandon one's desires expressed artistic well. The art aesthetics on Crazy and Weird of the Paldaesanin fluenced the unique and transformational paintings of Oh Chang-seok, Jebaekseok, and It greatly influenced the flow of individual and innovative paintings of the late Joseon and modern and contemporary Korean paintings.

The late 1930s was when the avantgarde photography was first introduced to Korea. The avantgarde artists, Youngkuk Yoo, Ushik Cho and Joo Hyun submitted their works including photogram, photomontage and straight photos to Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokaiten, the association of Japanese avant-garde artists founded in 1937. While most of these works are not sure of their existence, what we have is the sketche photos and documents of Yoo’s works submitted to the sixth Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokaiten in 1942. The interesting thing is that these photos display historical remains and statues of Buddha in Kyungju, where Korean Buddhism tradition flourished the most. This paper aims to prove the relationship between the photos of Kyungju and the nationalism in the Pacific War era (1941-1945). The avantgarde movement arose in Japan in the late 1930s when surrealism and constructivism started to spread. Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokai is the earliest group that denied the academism in Japan and claimed to support avantgarde art. In its exhibition were painting, relief, print, drawing as well as object and photography, all submitted without regard to its medium. This became the fine platform for avantgarde photograper including Aikyu and Nagoya photo avant-garde. Among the Korean members of the association was Ushik Cho, who actively worked on photograms and introduced surrealism photography to Korea. After the Pacific War, however, he became a pro-Japanese artist denouncing avantgarde art while cooperating in war heavily. Meanwhile, Youngkuk Yoo rather kept the distance with politics while switching to photography after the suppression on abstract art went stricter in Japan. In the 6th Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokaiten, 1942, he submitted seven of his photography works. Five of them were the photos of Kyungju. <No. 3> is an abstract photomontage that eliminated the politics of Berlin Dada, the religious symbolism and the function of representation in typical straight photos while relying on the traditional imagery of Kyungju with photography instead of abstract painting. The other two were reportage photos of air defense training in Japan. The instablity among the reportage photos of war and avantgarde photos in Yoo’s work mirrors the context that forms the Japanese avantgarde art where early Korean abstract artists emerged from.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the legitimacy of pluralism of aesthetics, focusing on individuality and tolerance. Since Danto proposed the end of art, various discussions have been held on the pluralism of art. Most discussions follow phenomenal analysis or meta-aesthetic methods. However, these discussions do not directly answer the question of whether the pluralism of art is worthwhile or worth pursuing. This article considers that the role of pluralism of aesthetics extends beyond the description of the phenomenon of contemporary art to the ethical necessity of the pluralism of art. The pluralism of aesthetics presupposes respect for individual liberal values, because it is established by the practice of tolerance and is sustainable by this practice. At the age of pluralism, there is no hierarchy between different art styles. Artists got the freedom to work without being bound by traditional norms or rules. Freedom of expression in art is manifested by variety of styles, materials and subjects. The changes that have arisen as the principles of artistic creation have resulted in the diversity of evaluation, criticism and interpretation. The freedom that art gains has raised a certain expectation on a possibility of a variety of works, as well as misunderstanding of pluralism of aesthetics, due to the fact that it seems that the principle of art has disappeared. But the principles of art have not gone away, but diversified. The diversity of art, as told by the pluralism of aesthetics does not mean unlimited diversity and does not include unlimited freedom. Even though the pluralism of art is accepted, it is possible to distinguish art and non-art. If the pluralism of art is unlimited, it will be no different from relativistic aesthetics. However, pluralism of aesthetics is not a relativistic aesthetic because it does not deny universal principles. It is also distinguished from relativistic aesthetics in that it requires practice of tolerance. The coexistence of various art principles is possible through practice of tolerance. As long as pluralism of aesthetics respects the value of individuality and demands the practice of tolerance, the pluralism of art is required ethically.

The purpose of this paper is to describe street photography as pre-history of street film. Street photography with various media from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century is one of the genres that reproduced the life of the modern metropolis. In particular, street photography that captured the rapid change of metropolis by using camera, has affinity with street film that will record a bright and dark side of metropolis as moving image. In other words, street photography was preparing the media, social, and cultural feature of street films. The affinity of street film and street photography can be defined by the conception of photographic image. according to Siegfried Kracauer, photographic image are related to memory and history rather than meaning, sign, symbol. He divide the photographic approach as realistic and plastic, and called a photographic approach in true sense of the word that is the plastic approach support the realistic approach. This photographic approach is similar to the manner historians approach historical material. Kracauer considered both of photography and history as the world before the metaphysical world: the lasting before the last. he regarded that place as awaiting waiting the restoration of materiality both in reality and in history. For Kracauer, photography be in charge of functions that capturing physical reality and ultimately putting the captured images in the position of history. When approaching the concept of photographic image, street photography is art which capturing physical reality of metropolis and accomplishing chance from instantly encountering event and things in street. In the case of Jacob Riis, who represents American street photography, he had approached New York slums in three ways. First, he inherited philanthropic and moral discours that dominated New York in 19th century. Second, he helped the public visually experience the misery of the slum through photographic practices such as slide show, publishing and photography. Third, he objectively recorded the life of physical reality of New York slums and poor people by using flashlight which was just invented at the time. By visualizing the lives of modern cities and providing them with experience in the public, Jacob Riis and his photographs can definitely be regarded as one of the pre-history of street film.

Kittler defines digital media as a technology in which all individual differences between all media are lost and all information is organized and processed in one language. Therefore, the pace of information processing is so fast that it can not be compared with the previous one, and thus our ‘Weltbild’ might be changed also. Computer graphic is also an image of digital technology, which can be seen as a pixel-based matrix on a binary legal number system, which can be seen as a linguistic system. Computer graphics, like the characters that make sense by the chain of signifiers, appear in the sequence of binary numbers on the matrix. In the history of long and complicated discourses on the relationship between images and texts, it is very ironic that the essence of the textuality of computer graphics is a literal thing even though our age is a world with realistic images. Another important feature of computer graphics that is real or virtual product of the inevitable reduction and distortion of the algorithm's result. Digital technology evolves at a fast pace and produces real images, but it can only be seen as distorting and reducing the richness of our visual experiences that have been segmented by numerous algorithms. Therefore the characteristics of these computer graphics can be seen as cultural features of our time.

This article explores issues of mood and atmosphere in contemporary art and architecture through the following two cases: 1) “The 21st–century Museum of Contemporary Art”(2004) designed by a Japanese architectural firm known as SANAA; and 2) an installation project called “Pour Your Body Out”(2009) made by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist. Both are cases in which the mood, or an atmospheric dimension of everyday space in the contemporary world is activated. However, it is noticeable that each case brings forth mood and atmosphere in different ways. SANAA considers atmosphere (instead of using the term ‘mood’) to be something that can loosely controlled and programmed, also a means to overcome the self-disciplined nature of modern architecture that does not fully respond to the fabrics of everyday life. Meanwhile, Rist's installation shows how mood arises in improvisational and aleatory ways. In other words, while atmosphere in the 21st–century Museum tends to be reduced as a design element, in Rist's work it becomes an affective driver that sets out a field in which various participants are passing through each other and entangled together without forming coherent senses of community.

Since postmodernism, the concept of Art has become disorganized and impossible to define whereas the concept of craft has been more standardized. Yet, effected by contemporary globalism, late capitalist production environment, and rapidly changing media environment, this article suggests that the redefinition of the concept of ‘craft’ is significantly demanded. Exploring the classification history of craft materials, this paper examines that not only primary materials but also ready-made or found-object can be considered as craft material. Discussing the form and meaning of ‘found object’, this research examines the found object involved in 20th century avant-garde art, contemporary independent craft, and craftivism. The concept of craft as a process and practice results in the question of how to reconstruct the relationship between ‘making’ and ‘craft’ in a broader context. It is bricolage, a way of understanding the real world by utilizing non-hierarchical materials and tools in an economical and rational way, as a framework to redefine the concept of craft. This study on the craft as a process and practice can be reconsidered due to the following two reasons. First, the research on craft concepts as a process and practice can discuss the methodology of expanding opportunities for people with diverse backgrounds to reconnect with society through self-directed production activities. Second, the concept of craft as a practice can contribute to rebuild the cultural community through socially productive activities.