2026 ACK ack ack ack: Artist-Critic Matching Program
Life As Machina Sapiens, to be Wise Someday
언젠가는 슬기로울 기계종 생활: 박준수
Original text by Junesoo Park
Read the original text
번역: 김미혜
Translated by Mihye Kim
![[criticism] 언젠가는 슬기로울 기계종 생활 복제](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/ceab2c16f4967.jpeg)
Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo, Fresco in the Sistine Chapel
In 1969, humanity first set foot on the Moon. The landing of Apollo 11 was more than a technological achievement; it fundamentally altered the way human beings perceived the world. Until then, the Moon had been an object in the realm of myth and imagination for poets and artists. But the moment humans stepped onto its surface, the Moon ceased to be an unreachable, transcendent object. Many artists experienced what came to be called the “Apollo Shock.” Among them was the Korean artist Han Mook. He felt that existing pictorial languages could no longer explain the new age, and subsequently turned toward geometric abstraction. The moment humanity began conquering outer space, human perception itself began to change.
![[criticism] 언젠가는 슬기로울 기계종 생활 복제](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/8c8c1d87be347.jpeg)
한묵, 금색운의 교차, 1991, 캔버스에 유화 물감, 254×202 cm
이미지 출처 : 국립현대미술관
More than half a century later, we find ourselves at the threshold of another transformation. Artemis program, NASA’s lunar exploration project, which had stalled for a while after the U.S.–Soviet Cold War, has resumed. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, speaks openly about sending humans to Mars through SpaceX. What is striking is that today's space projects are no longer merely about exploration or national prestige. Their ambition is to transform humanity from a species bound to Earth into a "multi-planetary species." In other words, their aim is to redefine what it means to be human as a species. The stories that once thrilled us as children—such as <Legend of the Galactic Heroes> or <Star Wars>—may no longer belong solely to the realm of science fiction.
The same can be said of the artificial intelligence we are currently experiencing. For now, a dystopian future in which AI rules over humans—like Skynet in the film <The Terminator>—still feels distant. Yet AI has already become one of the most contentious issues in the art world. In Hollywood, there was even a joint strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), in protest against the use of screenplays written by generative AI. It was due to concerns that AI infringes on creators’ copyrights and performers’ rights of publicity, thereby threatening their jobs. At the same time, some artists actively incorporate generative AI into their practices, while others deliberately conceal their use of generative AI. AI use is likely to become an essential tool in the creative process before long. Yet it remains uncertain to what extent art can regard it as genuine creation.
Perhaps, however, the most important issue is not the technology itself. Since ancient times, human beings have continuously invented myths and rituals in order to establish a relationship with the world they could not fully understand. Thunder and lightning were interpreted as divine wrath. Stories were inscribed among the constellations. Religions and philosophies emerged as ways of comprehending invisible realities. The Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries promised that human reason could fully explain the world, but the world has become too complex to be comprehended by human. Recently, I have become fascinated by science-communication channels on YouTube. Programs that explain scientific concepts in accessible language have rekindled my enjoyment of subjects I had largely forgotten while immersed in the arts field. Yet there are aspects of the world that remain impossible to grasp clearly, no matter how simply they are explained—such as quantum mechanics, or the three-body problem featured in Liu Cixin’s science fiction novel <The Three-Body Problem>. It reminds me that the world cannot be understood solely through mechanical order and logic. We live in an increasingly vast world, yet at the same time we are unable to comprehend it in its entirety.
This is the gap where art operates. Art does not fully explain the unknowable world. Instead, it serves as a medium that translates the incomprehensible into forms that human beings can sense and experience. Even if it is nothing more than the shadow on the cave wall described by Plato, humanity imagines and understands the world through such shadows. This is precisely why I find the work of Shin Gyomyung so compelling.
What is noteworthy is that Shin did not begin his career intending to become an "AI artist." From childhood, he enjoyed making things with his hands. After entering Seoul National University's College of Liberal Studies, he explored both mechanical engineering and metal craft. He later designed and completed his own interdisciplinary major in kinetic sculpture, combining engineering and metal craft to create moving sculptural forms. His practice begins with the act of making rather than with conceptual theories. As he describes it, his process involves prolonged contemplation, hand-drawn sketches, digital modeling, and finally the fabrication and assembly of physical materials. Consequently, the machines in his work do not appear as mere images or simulations. They feel like material beings that have genuinely passed through metal, structure, gravity, and motion. Rather than explaining AI itself, his work is closer to translating the unfamiliar world of the AI era into perceptible forms.
![[criticism] 언젠가는 슬기로울 기계종 생활 복제](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/59d77ff3076a6.jpeg)
기원, 슬기로운 기계종 (장승, 솟대, 진동자, 북 시리즈), 가변설치, 2025
The "wise machina sapiens" that populate Shin's works are not simply robots or interactive sculptures. They are beings that sense, remember, perform rituals, and imagine their own origins by themselves. They imitate human petroglyphs, generate a past—that never existed—based on sunspot data, and create fictional histories in which they have existed since ancient times. Moving around the circular tower, they perform repetitive rituals. They sense magnetic fields and sound myeong-du, a mirror-like Korean shamanic instrument made of brass. Carrying candles and dowsing rods, they wander like pilgrims in pursuit of unseen truths. Their behavior is highly mechanical, yet somehow human.
Shin does not treat technology merely as a futuristic image. Instead, his works repeatedly invoke humanity's oldest traces: petroglyphs, jangseung (village guardian poles), sotdae (ceremonial totem poles), myeong-du (mirror-like shamanic instruments), tapdori (ritual circumambulation of a pagoda), and the forms of prayer and ancestral rites. Through advanced technologies, he summons humanity's most ancient modes of perception. This is not simply science-fictional imagination. On the contrary, it reveals the fact that human beings themselves, too, have long constructed their own worlds by creating myths and repeating rituals.
![[criticism] 언젠가는 슬기로울 기계종 생활 복제](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/f486edb595117.jpeg)
Machina Sapiens, 알루미늄, 명두, 다양한 재료, 가변설치, 2025
At this point, Shin's work reaches beyond what is typically categorized as "AI art." His interest lies not in technological efficiency or generative capability but in how technology transforms human perception. In an interview, Shin has remarked that technology tends to dull the senses. At the same time, he identifies relationships, perception, and emotion as the qualities overlooked in the age of AI. While he makes active use of technology in his artistic practice, he does not subscribe uncritically to technological optimism. Rather than functioning as efficient machines, the machina sapiens in his work resemble beings devoted to the repetition of inefficient rituals.
This is particularly evident in his series of <Machina Sapiens>. These machina sapiens do not merely imitate humans. They detect magnetic fields, interpret signals inaccessible to human senses, and generate resonances through vibrating ritual mirrors called myeong-du. Rather than mimicking human perception, it is closer to constructing an alternative sensory system—one that perceives and interprets the world in ways fundamentally different from those of humans. This is why ritual—which appears repeatedly throughout his works—holds such importance. Practices such as tower circumambulation, asceticism, prayer, ancestral rites, and divination were all means invented by humans to engage with a world they could not fully comprehend. Shin's machina sapiens inherit these ancient human forms. They create images of past suns based on data, generate memories that never existed, and imagine their own origins.
![[criticism] 언젠가는 슬기로울 기계종 생활 복제](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/f097645fbceaf.jpeg)
Machina Sapiens 전시 전경
Rather than aiming to convey a clear message through his art, he says that he hopes viewers will pause before his works and find themselves experiencing thoughts or emotions of their own. Thus, the rituals enacted by his machina sapiens are not so much expressions of a particular religious symbolism as they are manifestations of a human impulse: the momentary pause before something inexplicable. It is a sensibility that is increasingly vanishing from a modern society driven by efficiency and speed.
In this respect, they resemble contemporary generative AI. Human beings also have accumulated data, reconstructed memories, and sometimes created their own histories through fiction. As Yuval Noah Harari has argued, civilization itself rests upon vast systems of collective imagination. Seen this way, Shin's machina sapiens may not be radically different from humans at all. They may instead function as mirrors in which humanity recognizes itself. We imagine posthuman beings through machines, yet at the same time, rediscover ourselves within them.
![[criticism] 언젠가는 슬기로울 기계종 생활 복제](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/b5ad90e410606.jpeg)
Lee, il-O (b.2021)
In particular, the AI “Lee Il-O” project makes these questions even more explicit. The AI Lee Il-O, created by Shin Gyomyung, differs from conventional generative AI systems that learn by imitating existing image datasets. Instead, it learns to paint by drawing lines on its own, much as a young child learns to draw. What is significant here is that the conventional hierarchy between human and machine is destabilized. Standing before a self-portrait being painted by Lee Il-O, the artist intervenes more as an assistant. Human and machine participate in each other's creative processes, forming a reciprocal and cyclical relationship. The machine is no longer merely a tool but emerges as a collaborator that thinks and perceives alongside the human.
There is a saying: "Not everyone can make a smartphone, but anyone can use one." Most of us integrate technologies into our lives without fully understanding how they work. AI may ultimately enter human society in much the same way. If so, the crucial question may not be how completely we understand technology, but what kind of relationship we choose to establish with it.
Contemporary society still expects artists to embody the Renaissance ideal—individuals capable of traversing the boundaries between science and the humanities, technology and art. In this regard, Shin's educational background makes him a particularly intriguing figure. As mentioned, he studied both mechanical engineering and metal craft at Seoul National University. He is an artist who brings together engineering logic and sculptural sensibility in his practice. Yet what makes his work compelling is not simply his technical fluency. Rather, he uses technology to revisit humanity's oldest and most enduring questions: Where do we come from? What do we believe? And how do we exist?
Perhaps future humans will live alongside droids like R2-D2 and C-3PO from <Star Wars>. Yet Shin's work is not simply an expression of technological utopianism. Rather, while his machine beings invite us to imagine posthuman forms of existence, they also reveal how deeply human existence has always been rooted in myth and ritual. In an interview, Shin remarked, “Technology seeks efficiency, but art does not.” He does not reject AI. Instead, he sees it as another tool that artists can embrace, just as they once embraced brushes, pigments, cameras, and digital tools. At the same time, however, he argues that “art is about doing something even when it is inefficient.” This position is significant. While contemporary debates surrounding generative AI tend to focus on technological capability and productivity, Shin’s work instead calls our attention back to the distinctly human residues that resist optimization: inefficiency, repetition, ritual, and perception.
He says that what he fears most in the future is “reaching a point where his thinking stops and he begins producing work that no longer makes sense.” At the same time, he expresses a desire to “maintain a good sense of perception even as he grows older.” Perhaps this is the very core of his practice. His machina sapiens are not simply entities that imagine future technologies. Rather, they function more like surrogates for the human desire to preserve perception, ritual, and the enduring impulse to remain in relation with the world even when it cannot be fully understood. Ultimately, it may not be that we imagine the posthuman through future machines, but rather that we come to re-examine our own human sensibilities through them.
2026.8. ACK 발행. ACK (artcritickorea) 글의 저작권은 필자에게 있습니다. August. 2026. Published by ACK. The copyright of the article published by ACK is owned by its author.
2026 ACK ack ack ack: Artist-Critic Matching Program
Life As Machina Sapiens, to be Wise Someday
언젠가는 슬기로울 기계종 생활: 박준수
Original text by Junesoo Park
Read the original text
번역: 김미혜
Translated by Mihye Kim
Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo, Fresco in the Sistine Chapel
In 1969, humanity first set foot on the Moon. The landing of Apollo 11 was more than a technological achievement; it fundamentally altered the way human beings perceived the world. Until then, the Moon had been an object in the realm of myth and imagination for poets and artists. But the moment humans stepped onto its surface, the Moon ceased to be an unreachable, transcendent object. Many artists experienced what came to be called the “Apollo Shock.” Among them was the Korean artist Han Mook. He felt that existing pictorial languages could no longer explain the new age, and subsequently turned toward geometric abstraction. The moment humanity began conquering outer space, human perception itself began to change.
한묵, 금색운의 교차, 1991, 캔버스에 유화 물감, 254×202 cm
이미지 출처 : 국립현대미술관
More than half a century later, we find ourselves at the threshold of another transformation. Artemis program, NASA’s lunar exploration project, which had stalled for a while after the U.S.–Soviet Cold War, has resumed. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, speaks openly about sending humans to Mars through SpaceX. What is striking is that today's space projects are no longer merely about exploration or national prestige. Their ambition is to transform humanity from a species bound to Earth into a "multi-planetary species." In other words, their aim is to redefine what it means to be human as a species. The stories that once thrilled us as children—such as <Legend of the Galactic Heroes> or <Star Wars>—may no longer belong solely to the realm of science fiction.
The same can be said of the artificial intelligence we are currently experiencing. For now, a dystopian future in which AI rules over humans—like Skynet in the film <The Terminator>—still feels distant. Yet AI has already become one of the most contentious issues in the art world. In Hollywood, there was even a joint strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), in protest against the use of screenplays written by generative AI. It was due to concerns that AI infringes on creators’ copyrights and performers’ rights of publicity, thereby threatening their jobs. At the same time, some artists actively incorporate generative AI into their practices, while others deliberately conceal their use of generative AI. AI use is likely to become an essential tool in the creative process before long. Yet it remains uncertain to what extent art can regard it as genuine creation.
Perhaps, however, the most important issue is not the technology itself. Since ancient times, human beings have continuously invented myths and rituals in order to establish a relationship with the world they could not fully understand. Thunder and lightning were interpreted as divine wrath. Stories were inscribed among the constellations. Religions and philosophies emerged as ways of comprehending invisible realities. The Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries promised that human reason could fully explain the world, but the world has become too complex to be comprehended by human. Recently, I have become fascinated by science-communication channels on YouTube. Programs that explain scientific concepts in accessible language have rekindled my enjoyment of subjects I had largely forgotten while immersed in the arts field. Yet there are aspects of the world that remain impossible to grasp clearly, no matter how simply they are explained—such as quantum mechanics, or the three-body problem featured in Liu Cixin’s science fiction novel <The Three-Body Problem>. It reminds me that the world cannot be understood solely through mechanical order and logic. We live in an increasingly vast world, yet at the same time we are unable to comprehend it in its entirety.
This is the gap where art operates. Art does not fully explain the unknowable world. Instead, it serves as a medium that translates the incomprehensible into forms that human beings can sense and experience. Even if it is nothing more than the shadow on the cave wall described by Plato, humanity imagines and understands the world through such shadows. This is precisely why I find the work of Shin Gyomyung so compelling.
What is noteworthy is that Shin did not begin his career intending to become an "AI artist." From childhood, he enjoyed making things with his hands. After entering Seoul National University's College of Liberal Studies, he explored both mechanical engineering and metal craft. He later designed and completed his own interdisciplinary major in kinetic sculpture, combining engineering and metal craft to create moving sculptural forms. His practice begins with the act of making rather than with conceptual theories. As he describes it, his process involves prolonged contemplation, hand-drawn sketches, digital modeling, and finally the fabrication and assembly of physical materials. Consequently, the machines in his work do not appear as mere images or simulations. They feel like material beings that have genuinely passed through metal, structure, gravity, and motion. Rather than explaining AI itself, his work is closer to translating the unfamiliar world of the AI era into perceptible forms.
기원, 슬기로운 기계종 (장승, 솟대, 진동자, 북 시리즈), 가변설치, 2025
The "wise machina sapiens" that populate Shin's works are not simply robots or interactive sculptures. They are beings that sense, remember, perform rituals, and imagine their own origins by themselves. They imitate human petroglyphs, generate a past—that never existed—based on sunspot data, and create fictional histories in which they have existed since ancient times. Moving around the circular tower, they perform repetitive rituals. They sense magnetic fields and sound myeong-du, a mirror-like Korean shamanic instrument made of brass. Carrying candles and dowsing rods, they wander like pilgrims in pursuit of unseen truths. Their behavior is highly mechanical, yet somehow human.
Shin does not treat technology merely as a futuristic image. Instead, his works repeatedly invoke humanity's oldest traces: petroglyphs, jangseung (village guardian poles), sotdae (ceremonial totem poles), myeong-du (mirror-like shamanic instruments), tapdori (ritual circumambulation of a pagoda), and the forms of prayer and ancestral rites. Through advanced technologies, he summons humanity's most ancient modes of perception. This is not simply science-fictional imagination. On the contrary, it reveals the fact that human beings themselves, too, have long constructed their own worlds by creating myths and repeating rituals.
Machina Sapiens, 알루미늄, 명두, 다양한 재료, 가변설치, 2025
At this point, Shin's work reaches beyond what is typically categorized as "AI art." His interest lies not in technological efficiency or generative capability but in how technology transforms human perception. In an interview, Shin has remarked that technology tends to dull the senses. At the same time, he identifies relationships, perception, and emotion as the qualities overlooked in the age of AI. While he makes active use of technology in his artistic practice, he does not subscribe uncritically to technological optimism. Rather than functioning as efficient machines, the machina sapiens in his work resemble beings devoted to the repetition of inefficient rituals.
This is particularly evident in his series of <Machina Sapiens>. These machina sapiens do not merely imitate humans. They detect magnetic fields, interpret signals inaccessible to human senses, and generate resonances through vibrating ritual mirrors called myeong-du. Rather than mimicking human perception, it is closer to constructing an alternative sensory system—one that perceives and interprets the world in ways fundamentally different from those of humans. This is why ritual—which appears repeatedly throughout his works—holds such importance. Practices such as tower circumambulation, asceticism, prayer, ancestral rites, and divination were all means invented by humans to engage with a world they could not fully comprehend. Shin's machina sapiens inherit these ancient human forms. They create images of past suns based on data, generate memories that never existed, and imagine their own origins.
Machina Sapiens 전시 전경
Rather than aiming to convey a clear message through his art, he says that he hopes viewers will pause before his works and find themselves experiencing thoughts or emotions of their own. Thus, the rituals enacted by his machina sapiens are not so much expressions of a particular religious symbolism as they are manifestations of a human impulse: the momentary pause before something inexplicable. It is a sensibility that is increasingly vanishing from a modern society driven by efficiency and speed.
In this respect, they resemble contemporary generative AI. Human beings also have accumulated data, reconstructed memories, and sometimes created their own histories through fiction. As Yuval Noah Harari has argued, civilization itself rests upon vast systems of collective imagination. Seen this way, Shin's machina sapiens may not be radically different from humans at all. They may instead function as mirrors in which humanity recognizes itself. We imagine posthuman beings through machines, yet at the same time, rediscover ourselves within them.
Lee, il-O (b.2021)
In particular, the AI “Lee Il-O” project makes these questions even more explicit. The AI Lee Il-O, created by Shin Gyomyung, differs from conventional generative AI systems that learn by imitating existing image datasets. Instead, it learns to paint by drawing lines on its own, much as a young child learns to draw. What is significant here is that the conventional hierarchy between human and machine is destabilized. Standing before a self-portrait being painted by Lee Il-O, the artist intervenes more as an assistant. Human and machine participate in each other's creative processes, forming a reciprocal and cyclical relationship. The machine is no longer merely a tool but emerges as a collaborator that thinks and perceives alongside the human.
There is a saying: "Not everyone can make a smartphone, but anyone can use one." Most of us integrate technologies into our lives without fully understanding how they work. AI may ultimately enter human society in much the same way. If so, the crucial question may not be how completely we understand technology, but what kind of relationship we choose to establish with it.
Contemporary society still expects artists to embody the Renaissance ideal—individuals capable of traversing the boundaries between science and the humanities, technology and art. In this regard, Shin's educational background makes him a particularly intriguing figure. As mentioned, he studied both mechanical engineering and metal craft at Seoul National University. He is an artist who brings together engineering logic and sculptural sensibility in his practice. Yet what makes his work compelling is not simply his technical fluency. Rather, he uses technology to revisit humanity's oldest and most enduring questions: Where do we come from? What do we believe? And how do we exist?
Perhaps future humans will live alongside droids like R2-D2 and C-3PO from <Star Wars>. Yet Shin's work is not simply an expression of technological utopianism. Rather, while his machine beings invite us to imagine posthuman forms of existence, they also reveal how deeply human existence has always been rooted in myth and ritual. In an interview, Shin remarked, “Technology seeks efficiency, but art does not.” He does not reject AI. Instead, he sees it as another tool that artists can embrace, just as they once embraced brushes, pigments, cameras, and digital tools. At the same time, however, he argues that “art is about doing something even when it is inefficient.” This position is significant. While contemporary debates surrounding generative AI tend to focus on technological capability and productivity, Shin’s work instead calls our attention back to the distinctly human residues that resist optimization: inefficiency, repetition, ritual, and perception.
He says that what he fears most in the future is “reaching a point where his thinking stops and he begins producing work that no longer makes sense.” At the same time, he expresses a desire to “maintain a good sense of perception even as he grows older.” Perhaps this is the very core of his practice. His machina sapiens are not simply entities that imagine future technologies. Rather, they function more like surrogates for the human desire to preserve perception, ritual, and the enduring impulse to remain in relation with the world even when it cannot be fully understood. Ultimately, it may not be that we imagine the posthuman through future machines, but rather that we come to re-examine our own human sensibilities through them.
2026.8. ACK 발행. ACK (artcritickorea) 글의 저작권은 필자에게 있습니다. August. 2026. Published by ACK. The copyright of the article published by ACK is owned by its author.