TAHN · MEDIA ARTIST · SOUTH KOREA
LIVING UNIVERSE SYSTEMS

INVISIBLE SIGNALS
BECOME
IRREVERSIBLE TRACES.

They accumulate.
They remember.
They do not reset.

Tahn transforms signals from bodies, places and the planet into structures that retain what has already happened. His current practice converges in Living Universe Systems — artworks whose previous states become the conditions of what comes next.

Residency 2027Al Qasimi Foundation · Ras Al KhaimahResidency 2026–27FILE NOT FOUND · Goethe-Institut / VEHA · BLMK 2027Visiting Artist/ScholarICCI ART VALLEY · Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversitySelectedISEA 2026 · DubaiFinalistADSW Art Award · Top 3Commission2026 National Heritage Media Art · CheongjuResidencyInfluss · Malta / Intermix · RiyadhCollectionsDaegu Museum of Art · Jeonnam Museum of ArtResidency 2027Al Qasimi Foundation · Ras Al KhaimahResidency 2026–27FILE NOT FOUND · Goethe-Institut / VEHA · BLMK 2027Visiting Artist/ScholarICCI ART VALLEY · Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversitySelectedISEA 2026 · DubaiFinalistADSW Art Award · Top 3Commission2026 National Heritage Media Art · CheongjuResidencyInfluss · Malta / Intermix · RiyadhCollectionsDaegu Museum of Art · Jeonnam Museum of Art
01Selected WorksArtwork, seen first 02Live SystemsField / universe / calendar 03Working Proofs#000 / time / seismic trace 04PracticeMethod / statement / lineage 05CV + DownloadsRecognition / portfolio / contact

Selected works.

Six entry points into the practice. Each work is given enough space to be seen before it is explained — memory, Korean symbolic systems, ecological fracture, live data and public scale.

FIELD / PLACE / DECLARED TIME

Live systems / online archives.

LOCAL FIELD asks how a place is read. LOCAL UNIVERSE asks what its invisible conditions leave behind. CALENDAR FIELD asks how one declared time is read by different systems. PRIVATE UNIVERSE extends this framework toward individual state and accumulated history.

Live / accumulating Spatial field · 2026

LOCAL FIELD

WHERE IS HERE? · Site-Responsive Seam Archive

Structural traits extracted from Tahn's 101 hand-drawn works - line, density, void and fracture - are continuously reorganized by the anonymous 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi field of each site. The work does not reproduce the drawings; it lets human-made structure and machine sensing meet as incomplete readings of place.

101 drawingsseam structurehuman × machineaccumulating archive
101 SEAMS / LOCAL FIELDdrawing ↔ sensing
seam → accumulating record

LOCAL FIELD is an accumulating site-responsive archive. An artist-authored structural grammar and anonymous local sensing remain visibly different; the seam between them is the record.

Live archive online Ephemeral field · 2026

LOCAL UNIVERSE

WHAT REMAINS OF A PLACE? · Wi-Fi Field Generative Archive

A site-responsive online archive that observes anonymous 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi field conditions and translates signal count, strength, deviation, and channel structure into suns, moons, mountains, orbits, stars, and accumulating strata. It records no SSIDs and identifies neither devices nor people; what remains is the invisible condition of a place.

2.4 GHz fieldanonymous sensinggenerative systemlive archive
LOCAL UNIVERSE / 2.4 GHzsignal → structure
place → accumulating image

Unlike the moving-image works below, LOCAL UNIVERSE continues to change with the field around it. Tahnverse remains the curatorial portal; the external archive remains the work’s live operating environment.

Participatory / accumulating Temporal field · 2026

CALENDAR FIELD

WHEN IS NOW? · Participatory Temporal Archive

When a participant declares a name and a date, Western zodiac, the animal cycle, Four Pillars, the 60-cycle, and the relation to the present read the same coordinate differently. A talisman is then generated through Tahn’s structural language, and only when the participant chooses to settle it does an anonymous coordinate enter the collective archive. No single reading represents the whole person.

multiple readingsgenerated talismananonymous coordinateparticipatory archive
CALENDAR FIELD / 曆場declared date → multiple readings
talisman → anonymous accumulation

One date is read by several systems, but none is the whole. Names and original inputs do not remain in the collective archive, and no talisman image file is stored. What is preserved is not the image, but an anonymous coordinate and the rule by which the image can return.

CURRENT / VERIFIED / IN DEVELOPMENT

Working proofs.

Current systems are separated from completed moving-image works. Each proof states what already works and what remains under development, so curators can distinguish evidence from proposal.

Open full working-proof documentation

CURRENT WORKING PROOF · 2026

PRIVATE UNIVERSE #000

First public working instance · 2026

One person. One genesis. One accumulating history.

A working field, not a recording. Drag to rotate.Enter the work →

PRIVATE UNIVERSE #000 is the first public working instance of Living Universe Systems. Earlier investigations into memory, closed artist-owned data, measurement, bodily signals and no-reset systems converge here as a single artistic proposition: an individual universe that carries the history of its encounters.

Several lines of the practice meet here.
#000 is a public working proof, not the endpoint of the system.

Public web instance: manual/simulated biosignals, optional USB sensor input, browser-local memory. Material output and a persistent installation archive are in development. The current procedural renderer does not yet use the 101 drawings or custom LoRA.

PARTICIPATORY TRACE PROTOCOL · 2026–

CONDENSATION OF TIME

A modular exhibition protocol for selected moving-image works. A viewer does not simply receive an image from the work; the act of choosing a moment changes what the work carries forward.

Condensation of Time working exhibition configuration: moving image, viewer trigger and thermal printer
Prototype shown with Alternate Universe Expansion · viewer trigger + thermal print · 2026
Working exhibition configuration · in preparation

A moment is taken from the moving image — and written back into its future.

When a viewer presses the button, one moment from the moving image is selected, condensed into an image and printed on thermal paper.

The intervention also leaves a trace inside the video. In later loops, the selected moment reappears as a condensed image, so the work no longer returns to exactly the same temporal state.

01Moving image02Viewer intervention03Condensed image04Thermal trace05Re-entry06Altered loop

The viewer takes one moment from the work while leaving one moment of their own within it.

This is not a new title retroactively applied to earlier films. It is a participatory trace layer that can be activated in selected moving-image works when the work’s temporal logic calls for it.

Method, artist statement & practice lineage — open
Working System | Method
Closed Dataset as Visual DNA.

Before the algorithm, there is the hand. Tahn’s 101 original drawings form an artist-owned visual corpus. A custom LoRA model carries selected relationships—density, interval, contour, fracture, grain, and temporal rhythm—into generative fields that can be reorganized by live signals. The method keeps authorship and perceptual logic traceable without reducing the work to prompt aesthetics.

The closed dataset + custom LoRA is an established method within this practice. PRIVATE UNIVERSE #000 currently uses a procedural renderer; the 101 drawings and custom LoRA are not yet connected to this web work.

01Authored source

101 hand-drawn works form the artist-owned visual corpus and its ethical boundary. The closed dataset contains no external image material.

02Structural training

A custom model learns relationships among density, interval, contour, grain, fracture, surface pressure, and spatial rhythm rather than reproducing a fixed image style.

03Live reorganization

News, sound, EEG, breath, attention, and environmental signals can reorganize the trained field, so memory behaves as a changing structure rather than a fixed image output.

Input

101 original works

Artist-owned drawings establish the visual corpus and ethical boundary.

Training

Custom LoRA

The model learns structure, density, grain, fracture, and temporal rhythm.

Output

Memory field

Live signals continuously reorganize the trained field into an evolving time-based system.

Integrated method diagram: 101 original works, closed dataset, custom LoRA, generative memory field
Closed Dataset as Visual DNA | 101 Original Drawings → Custom LoRA → Generative Memory Field | 2026
Exhibition configuration

The system adapts to the site; the method remains intact.

Selected works can be realized as single-channel moving image, multi-screen projection, sensor-responsive installation, public media façade, or research-based participatory system. A modular real-time engine, local playback, fallback states, and site-specific projection mapping allow each work to adapt to spatial and technical conditions without changing its conceptual logic.

Spatial study · not documentation

Concept & Installation Scenarios

Concept and Installation Scenarios video thumbnail

This conceptual spatial visualization is not documentation of a completed installation. It is a scenario study used to test scale, atmosphere, projection logic, visitor movement, and site-specific adaptation.

Open on YouTube
Practice framework & lineage — expand

HOW A UNIVERSE ACQUIRES A HISTORY

01

GENESIS

A person gives a world its beginning. A name, words and a rhythm establish its first state.

02

EVENT

Signals enter. A bodily rhythm, a simulated disturbance or a recorded planetary event can act on the field.

03

MEMORY

A recorded encounter changes the state that follows. Previous events remain legible as points, threads and ruptures.

04

NO RESET

The next event begins from what remains. This is a rule of composition; in the web work, its continuity depends on this browser’s stored history.

Enter the work →

HOW THE PRACTICE ARRIVED HERE

Different media.
One question carried forward.

These are four strands of an evolving practice. #000 is one public working proof inside this framework; the strands also continue through other works.

IMEMORY / CLOSED DATA

Memory is recomposed.

MEMORY REWRITTEN
101 ORIGINAL DRAWINGS / CLOSED DATASET

An authored archive establishes the visual language and the boundary of what can be recombined.

IIFIELD / MEASUREMENT

A world is read incompletely.

101 SEAMS — LOCAL FIELD
LOCAL UNIVERSE · CALENDAR FIELD

Drawings, local signals and declared time produce different readings of the same world. No single measurement stands for the whole.

IIITRACE / NO RESET

An event leaves something behind.

QUAKE SCAR
THERMAL RESIDUE
CONDENSATION OF TIME · PROTOCOL

Seismic marks accumulate on displays; thermal traces expose the vulnerability of material records; viewer interventions can return to selected moving images and alter what later loops inherit. Persistence, fading and re-entry become artistic conditions.

IVLIVING UNIVERSE

A work carries its own history.

STRATA OF BREATH
PRIVATE UNIVERSE #000

Bodily encounters and layered time meet in the current direction: individual systems whose accumulated states shape what can happen next.

Time is not a line. It is a living structure.

I build artworks that remember. Signals from bodies, places and planetary systems become structural traces; the next event encounters what the previous one has left. My practice has developed through a closed artist-owned dataset + custom LoRA, live sensing, participatory archives and no-reset systems. These lines now converge in Living Universe Systems.

I was born into a country that had just emerged from the devastation of war. My parents’ generation fought for survival and reconstruction; my generation inherited a different war, one of identity, adaptation, and attention in an accelerated technological era.

Standardized vision is one of the pressures my work tests: who defines a normal observer, and what becomes illegible when one perceptual system is treated as universal? Structure, density, texture, interval, fracture, luminance, and spatial pressure therefore operate as parallel perceptual languages rather than secondary substitutes for color.

My work brings Korean symbolic systems such as Ilwolobongdo, moon jars, folk talismans, and ritual architectures into contact with computational vision, EEG, breath, environmental signals, and generative systems. I do not use technology to decorate tradition. I use it to test how inherited forms persist, mutate, and acquire new agency under contemporary conditions.

In my installations, time is not a neutral background. It is a material. Memory is not an archive. It is a living organism. The audience is not a visitor outside the work. They become a force inside its field.

Selected Recognition

International selections & institutional contexts.

2027

Ras Al Khaimah Artist Residency Grant

Selected artist-in-residence, six-month program, Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research, UAE.

2026–27

FILE NOT FOUND · Goethe-Institut

Selected artist-in-residence, VEHA Archive, Poland. Final exhibition at BLMK, Cottbus, Germany, 2027.

2026

ICCI ART VALLEY

International Visiting Artist/Scholar, USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China.

2026

ISEA 2026

Selected artist, International Symposium on Electronic Art, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

2026

Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week Art Award

Finalist, Top 3, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Watch event video
2026

National Heritage Media Art · Cheongju

Who Will Be Recorded in the Future? commissioned media artwork, Korea.

Selected CV

Tahn (Taeyoung An)

Residencies, grants & current programs
2027 Al Qasimi Foundation Artist Residency Grant, Ras Al Khaimah, UAE · six months
2026-27 FILE NOT FOUND, Goethe-Institut / VEHA, Poland · BLMK final exhibition, Germany, 2027
2026 ICCI ART VALLEY, International Visiting Artist/Scholar, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
2026 Influss Artistic Residence, Culture Directorate, Malta
2026 Intermix Residency, Ministry of Culture, JAX District, Riyadh
2026 Art Korea Lab AI-Arts Project Support, selected artist / project grantee
Selected exhibitions & awards
2026 ISEA 2026, Selected Artist, Dubai, UAE
2026 ADSW Art Award, Finalist, Top 3, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2026 Tuwaiq Sculpture 2026, Official Media Facade Screening, Riyadh
2025 Royal Scottish Academy, 199th Open Art Exhibition, Edinburgh
2025 Kinomural International New Media Art Festival, Wroclaw
2023 Royal West of England Academy, 170th Anniversary Exhibition
Selected digital / online systems
2026 101 SEAMS — LOCAL FIELD, site-responsive generative archive
2026 LOCAL UNIVERSE, Wi-Fi field generative archive
2026 CALENDAR FIELD 曆場, participatory computational time archive
2026 PRIVATE UNIVERSE #000, web demonstrator / working prototype
Collections
Daegu Museum of Art, Korea
Jeonnam Museum of Art, Korea
Pohang Museum of Art, Korea
Incheon International Airport Corporation, Korea
City Hall of Zaneccano, Italy
Central Museum of International Contemporary Art, Italy
Public art & recognition
2026 Who Will Be Recorded in the Future?, 2026 National Heritage Media Art, Cheongju
Incheon International Airport Terminal 1 Media Wall
Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Gwanghwamun Plaza Media Facade
Korea Independence Memorial Hall Media Facade
Seoul Road Media Canvas, Seoul Station
Featured in Korean middle-school art textbook; Ministry of Foreign Affairs official channels; KBS Culture Sketch
Downloads

Submission materials.

Current curatorial and submission materials. A carefully edited selection of works, installations and live systems. Additional documentation is available on request.

Institutional inquiries / commissions — open
Inquiries & Commissions

Museum · Commission · Collection · Research.

Focused inquiries are welcome from museums, biennials, public art programs, cultural foundations, universities, curators, collectors, and commissioning bodies seeking media works grounded in time, memory, attention, and place.

01 | Exhibition

Installations and screenings

Single-channel moving image, multi-screen installation, generative time-based installation, sensor-responsive environments, and live participatory archives can be configured for museums, festivals, and curated programs. Works such as CALENDAR FIELD can scale as an interactive terminal plus an archive display or projection.

02 | Public Space

Media facade commissions

Site-specific public media rituals for façades, civic screens, airports, cultural plazas, and architectural surfaces where Korean symbolic systems meet contemporary urban memory.

03 | Collection

Acquisition and artwork inquiry

Inquiries regarding editioned media works, institutional acquisition, closed-dataset generative works, provenance documentation, and long-term preservation materials.

04 | Knowledge Sharing

Talks, workshops, research

Artist talks and workshops on chronotopic media art, non-standard perception, artist-owned dataset authorship, biosignal interaction, and public media practice.

Institutional inquiry form

For site-specific commissions, acquisitions, exhibitions, public media projects, or research collaborations, please outline the institutional context and technical conditions. This form is configured for Netlify Forms after deployment; direct email remains available below.

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Direct Contact

Direct Contact

For curatorial review, commission proposals, public media projects, artwork acquisition, artist talks, and workshop invitations, please contact Tahn directly.

tahn.artist@gmail.com