Searching for Love Impossible

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TA 8 (2) pp. 229236 Intellect Limited 2010

Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research Volume 8 Number 2

2010 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/tear.8.2.229_1

KEYWORDS

paradoxinteractive mediashamanismavatarritualvirtual reality

SEMI RYUVirginia Commonwealth University

Searching for love impossible

ABSTRACT

We live in layers of mixed realities with continuous conflicts, negotiation and becoming. I find it interesting to look at our situation as a continuous struggle in the fusion of virtual/actual presences, and machine/human. However, we seem to be far from understanding these relationships. Maybe the problem lies in the ques-tions themselves, promoting unidirectional preconceptions. By reversing the ques-tions, we might be able to identify something that has been missing in previous discussions:

Can we talk about disconnection to further discuss connection?Can we talk about distancing to further discuss the process of becoming?Can we talk about love impossible, to further discuss love?

This paradoxical journey would maintain us in the continuum of struggle and massive doubts, and encounter deep aspects of human being. In this article, I examine the Korean cultural psyche called han in the context of a paradoxical state of consciousness and the story of love impossible, and argue that han is a driving force of transformative ritual in human consciousness. Beyond cul-tural boundaries, this article also positions han in a microscopic view of con-temporary life. Han underlies paradoxical human relationships with objects, and with my virtual puppets, in the context of distance, disconnection and love impossible.

TA 8.2_art_Ryu_229236.indd 229TA 8.2_art_Ryu_229236.indd 229 11/1/10 2:02:45 PM11/1/10 2:02:45 PM

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I have always searched for an object I can fall in love with. Me and you, me and my musical instruments, me and a tree I am looking at, me and the puppet I am speaking to []

As a woman raised according to traditional Korean culture, I always fear being punished for expressing my love and emotions. My love should not be exposed. It must be kept secret all the time. There is something exciting about this secret game, though. Though barred from the actual experience, I am rewarded with imagination, sometimes more vivid than the real, which disappears suddenly when actualized. Until then, I could be a great storyteller of my own love story playing endlessly in infinite imaginary space an experi-ence so vivid it seems tactile, working with the entire body, constructing alter-nate states of senses, nerves and physicality. It is new reality, more real than real, the rainbow that cannot be perceived except from a distance. I promise myself never to touch it, so I can still see, feel and dream it over the distance. The distance challenges me to look over, standing on my toes, lengthening my neck, and narrowing my eyes, very carefully and longingly, for my eternal process of loving.

Oddly, my experience of love is not driven by memory or time spent with the beloved. It is more about a transient encounter, like a lost toy on the street, with a strange sense of total disconnection. An object with obvi-ous traces showing that someone owned it, used it and loved it. However, the memory of its past is lost, beyond my reach. This sense of disconnection appears even more powerful with objects seen from the window of a mov-ing train. Distant objects like a red brick warehouse or a strangely gnarled black tree pass by and gradually slip further away. Sensing the unbridge-able distance, I feel an urge to run out of the train to touch, smell and even devour them. These unattainable things become, under my gaze, the ritual objects for my process of love impossible: the ritual of transformation and imagination, conjuring alternate reality. The distance makes me powerless, like screaming in a nightmare, struggling to wake up. At last, I find myself suddenly thrown back to my bed, as my screaming erupts as actual noise: in fact, a small sound, almost unnoticeable, but with energy to turn the world inside out. This is the moment of transformation, but could easily pass unnoticed.

My process of loving is not about remembering, but about creating mem-ory, creating a new universe. It is not about the past, but about the future. My gaze and interest creates and re-confirms the distance, coordinating the Z axis and marking the depth between subject and object. The act of distanc-ing always happens on the Z axis, creating the genuine moment when the beloved and I solemnly face each other. Everything seems to be far from me, and slipping away. Everything is parting on Z, starting from my gaze, my interest and my love, turning to the next story of love impossible. All these stories may sound very personal and subjective; however, in Korean culture it is common to find many such sad stories, music and songs dealing with love impossible. These stories conform to a structure of the Korean cultural psyche called Han (). Han provides a useful model to explain this paradoxical aspect of human experience.

We live in layers of mixed realities with continuous conflicts, negotiation and becoming, between cyber- and real-space. I find it interesting to look at our situation as a continuous struggle in the fusion of virtual/actual presences,



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and machine/human. However, we seem to be very far from understanding ourselves in paradoxical relationships, either virtual or actual, either machine or human. Maybe the problem lies in the questions themselves, promoting unidirectional preconceptions. By reversing the questions, we might be able to identify something that has been missing in previous discussions:

Can we talk about disconnection to further discuss connection?Can we talk about distancing to further discuss the process of becoming?Can we talk about love impossible, to further discuss love?

This paradoxical journey would maintain us in the continuum of struggle and massive doubts. My broad expectation from this journey is to encoun-ter much larger human being, far beyond human intellect. In this article, I examine han in the context of the form of ritual I have previously defined in Ritualizing Interactive Media, and argue that han is a driving force in the entire ritual process. Beyond cultural boundaries, this article also positions han in a microscopic view of contemporary life. Han underlies paradoxical human relationships with objects, with virtual beings, in the context of distance, dis-connection and love impossible.

HAN () IN THE FORM OF RITUALHan has been known as the most important characteristic of Korean mind and emotions (Choi 1993a). Han is a paradoxical state of consciousness that com-bines an extreme state of grief caused by physical or mental constraints with a great hope and strong desire for overcoming the situation. What the king of the Chosun dynasty of Korea feared most was to see people looking up to sky with sighs or tears, since this is the sign of han. Han calls forth revolu-tion, which makes people look to the sky with fearsome desire for change. Han motivates people to see beyond the power structure, lamenting the con-flicts between dream and reality.

The form of ritual I define in my paper Ritualizing Interactive Media could explain han in the context of the ritual (Ryu 2005).

THE FORM OF RITUAL

Agent

Tragedy of Separation (polar opposites): sky/earth, spiritual/mundane, object/life, puppet/puppeteer []

Channels of mediators

Shaman object, Shaman, another shaman, group of shamans []

Process

Interaction grows to its highest level and becomes Interpenetration.In this state, polar opposites completely exchange their position through

membrane and create new separation starting for a new ritual.

Byproduct (Virtual puppetry)

This ritual is for the process itself, not for the product. The unexpected Hybrid is created as byproduct.


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Driving force (han)

Extreme emotional state of grief caused by physical or mental constraints, with strong wishes to overcome the situation.

In the form of Ritual, Ritual starts by recognizing tragedy: Separation. It is separation between sky and earth, between you and me, between life and death, between spiritual and mundane, between body and mind [] In the moment of recognizing this irremediable distance, we confirm our own tragedy in the mode of han, with extreme grief but with strong will to over-come. Han thus drives the process of ritual of transformation. Han initiates the process of ritual where polar opposites begin to interact, interpenetrating and eventually transforming into each other. This process intensifies, mediated by multiple channels of shamans: the ritual object (shaman object), the shaman herself/himself, and further, the audience. The ultimate state of transforma-tion and play arises at the very moment of unification of polar opposites; how-ever, the ritual goes further, surpassing the moment of fullness. Interestingly, ritual returns us back to another tragedy: another separation, another set of polar opposites that have merely exchanged their positions. The ritual does not resolve any problem. The ritual does not erase the distance. However, the distance will prompt the next iteration of the ritual. The heart of the ritual is process, not product. The ritual has no objective purpose; its byproduct is an unexpected transient encounter.

Han is never resolved, but is rather released by ritual (Lee 2003), whereas another emotional state observed in Eastern Asian culture, won (,) is one that must be resolved (Choi 1991). Won tries to overcome a distressing situ-ation by eliminating the source of the problem. Therefore, won often culmi-nates in revenge, animosity and resentment, or, alternatively, gratitude for a blessing or kindness. Won commonly drives East Asian heroic literature. Quite distinct from won, han is non-objective mind (Kim 2004). It is reversed attitude to project all sources of reason towards oneself, attending to ones own participation in the situation (Choi 1993b). It creates an extreme state of grief, weakness, self-accusation, and a sense of futility. It may sound very pas-sive, and it is true that han has been primarily discussed negatively in Korea, related to the tragic Korean history of never-ending invasions from neigh-bouring countries (Han and Han 2007). But han reflects a quantum mind that positions itself as part of a problematic interconnected system. Han tends to embrace everything in the system, including difficulties. Korean writer Ji-ha Kim highlights the essential quality of han as Passive Activeness in his book Hwang-To, in which he uses a lotus flower as a metaphor for endless flow of love.

He wrote (Kim 1970):

The lotus flower is born in morasses of mud. It has hidden meaning of life, transparent, endless wandering, disappointment, frustration, and discouragement. It is always abandoned but always loves with endless passion toward the world, toward human, toward all things []

It is an endless flow of love and process, through constant pain, grief and difficulties arisen from paradox. It is an infinite process of loving. It is unconditional and eternal. Han shows a way to live with problems but with great hope and strong belief, asserting with a soft but powerful voice, not yet but some day! Korean scholar Eo-Lyeong Lee supports optimistic sense



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of han, saying Han cannot be shaped without a strong desire to overcome the situation (Lee 1982). Han gives courage to deal with pain, even magnifying it for the ritual. Yeol-Gyu Kim said han is a necessary condition to jump up to the extreme state of playfulness called Shin-Myung, showing the other side of han, and how opposite emotional states contrast, balance and transform into each other (Kim 1986). Han is a sense of grief but also a sense of joy. It is a cry but also a laugh. It is a soft but very powerful energy of creation.

The form of ritual could be compared with Korean clowns tightrope walk-ing, which looks very risky, unstable and unbalanced, continuously swinging left and right. The clown usually holds a fan in one hand, which seems to defy balance. This demonstrates a different philosophy of balancing, continu-ously back and forth between balance and unbalance. The degree of instability is determined by the length of his outspread arms, aided by a fan a ritual object. It is the cosmic tree, which connects between separated poles: left and right. The more unstable he appears, the greater his stillness will appear. The longer the cosmic tree, the deeper han. The deeper han, the more powerful the ritual.

HAN IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY AND VIRTUAL PUPPETRY

Ritual demonstrates the infinite process of transformation that occurs in diverse layers of human experience, from micro to macro scales, from human consciousness to the sacred ceremony. As a driving force of the ritual, han could transcend cultural boundaries.

In contemporary society, han can be situated in a microscopic view of human oppression, caused by invisible powers of social structures (Guattari 1996). Our bodies and desire, socially constructed and pre-defined, attain some degree of han only if we perceive repression. However, the great-est sadness would be to lose the sensation of distance, disconnection and love impossible, to lose the sense of ourselves as human beings struggling with power structures, to lose the ability to experience powerlessness, to really cry; to lose the ability to feel han.

Han informs the human dilemma of living in the system of control, confronting the separation and distance of everyday life. Sometimes I ask myself, Why are we all separated like this? This separation is indeed sad, but this question seems neither appropriate nor satisfying in con-temporary social life. Maybe we are the main characters of a story of love impossible. However, without feeling the tragedy, how can we cry or laugh with the story? Without feeling the distance, how can we dream of revolution?

I see my virtual puppetry in the same context of love impossible, proposing a longer cosmic tree, and deeper han, for the greater process of the ritual. My virtual puppetry proposes han, embracing conflicts, difficulties and distance of virtual/actual presences, traditional/digital media and human/computer. My virtual puppetry Parting on Z at Chelsea Art Museum, NYC explored han in the paradoxical relationship between virtual puppet and puppeteer via the distance between avatar and user symbolic lovers fac-ing each other, continuously exchanging dialogues of love and farewell. The story chosen for this performance was the farewell scene fromChun-Hyang-Ga, the classic Korean impossible love story that demonstrates han (Figures 13).


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Figure 2: Symbolic lovers: virtual puppet and puppeteer, from Parting on Z.

Figure 1: The virtual puppet Mong-Ryong from virtual puppet performance Parting on Z.



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Figure 3: The virtual puppet, mapped with live video of the puppeteers face, from Parting on Z.


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REFERENCES

Choi, S. (1991), A Psychological Conceptualization of Korean Hahn Concept and Its Empirical Evaluation, , Seoul: Korean Psychological Association.

(1993a), Korean Psychology of Shim-Jung: Phenomelogical unders-tanding of Jung and Han, Symposium, Seoul: Korean Psychological Association, pp. 78.

(1993b), Korean Psychology of Shim-Jung: Phenomelogical unders-tanding of Jung and Han, Symposium, Seoul: Korean Psychological Association, pp. 89.

Guattari, F. (1996), Soft Subversions, New York: Semiotext(e), pp. 714. Han, M. and Han, S. (2007), Psychology of Shin-Myeong

, Korean Journal of Psychology, 26: 1, pp. 845.Kim, J. (1970), , Seoul: , p. 101. (2004), , Philosophy 78, Seoul: Korean

Philosophical Association, pp. 3201.Kim, Y. (1986), , Seoul: ,

pp. 12333. Lee, E. (1982), Culture of releasing , , Seoul:

JoongAng Daily Newspaper, pp. 923. (2003), Culture of releasing , , Seoul:

.Ryu, S. (2005), Ritualizing Interactive Media; from motivation to activation,

Technoetic Arts, 3: 2, Bristol: Intellect Ltd.

SUGGESTED CITATION

Ryu, S. (2010), Searching for love impossible, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 8: 2, pp. 229236, doi: 10.1386/tear.8.2.229_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Semi Ryu is an Associate Professor of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University. Ryu is a media artist who specializes in experi-mental 3D animations and virtual puppetry, based on Korean shamanism and the oral tradition of storytelling. Her works have been widely presented in exhibitions and performances in more than fifteen countries, and her aca-demic papers, which have focused on the ritualization of interactive media, have been published in international journals and conferences. Recently, her virtual puppetry Parting on Z was performed at Chelsea Art Museum, NYC (http://www.semiryu.net).

Contact: Associate Professor, Kinetic Imaging, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA.E-mail: [email protected]: www.semiryu.net


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