Ji Sun Lee's 2nd Solo Show: Quotidian - Documenting Everyday Life - show catalog

3. Quotidian
Documenting Everyday Life
Codifying my daily, routine activities is a way of visualizing and gaining
insight into the greater total event called my life. The people, places,
things, and processes that cumulatively define who I am are unique
occurrences within me, yet they are also common experiences we all
share.
My daily life in Seoul and the time I spent in New York are memories
that are selections by their very nature. Recollecting and reconstituting
them as visual code creates a meta-level of remembrance that is similar
to information graphics but different in representing a micro view of
personal data that leads to a macro view of an individual’s life.
Quotidian - Documenting Everyday Life is divided into separate categories
of daily living: Commuting, Shopping, Eating, Dressing, Residing, and
Sharing.
Riding the New York City M5 bus in 2007 is my original source of inspi-
ration.

4. Commuting
The M5 bus runs in Manhattan, from SoHo to Harlem. Passengers looking out the bus
window are foreign to me. Riding the bus provides a broad palate of moving colors on the
streets of a strange land: People’s hair, faces and clothes become a visual record of living in
New York City.
A comparable ride on the 1500-1 bus in Seoul reveals a homo-
geneous society. The passengers and people on the street are
the same in color: Their hair, faces and clothes contrast with
the changing colors along the New York City bus route. Colors
darken as the M5 moves from SoHo to Harlem.
Easily identifiable are the colors and patterns of the people’s clothes and their accessories,
such as hats or sunglasses. Advertising images and maps found in the interior of the buses
are also included. The distinct ambient sound of each of the buses tracks their arrival and
departure along their routes.
Ji Sun Lee_commuting - people in New York City and Seoul_digital illustration_2012

7. Ji Sun Lee_commuting - M5 Bus in New York City_digital illustration and video with sound_2012

9. Ji Sun Lee_commuting - 1500-1 Bus in Seoul_digital illustration and video with sound_2012

10. shopping
In capitalist society the individual act of buying is hallow. For me, going shopping once a
week is one of my most important activities. I usually go to a mall and purchase things to eat
and live. I have taken four months’ worth of receipts and combined the barcode of each of
them with images of the itemized foods and products I purchased. These, in turn have been
subject to the same visual coding. The sounds at the mall and the check out counter heighten
the immediacy of the event.
Ji Sun Lee_shopping_video with sound_2012

13. Ji Sun Lee_shopping_digital illustration_2012

14. eating
Among the necessities of life, eating is the sine qua non. For a month, I recorded the food
dishes placed on my table and coded them in a series of dots. I was inspired by Damien
Hurst’s work entitled Dots. But while death is the subject of his abstract work, the dots in my
work prescribe the colors of food as a celebration of life.

16. Ji Sun Lee_eating 1_digital illustration_2012

17. Ji Sun Lee_eating 2_digital illustration and video_2012

18. dressing
Every morning, we spend a good deal of time deciding what to wear. Looking at a rack of
clothes in a closet provides an initial visual response to color and texture. I photographed my
closet and that of my husband and daughter, mapping them in color.

19. Animating the colors corresponds to sifting through clothes on the rack. Their modulating
sizes are visual metaphors of removing and replacing them on the rack.

20. Ji Sun Lee_dressing_digital illustration and video_2012

22. residing
I live on the main street of Seoul, in an apartment. It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a
kitchen, and a living room. The furniture, objects and appliances in each of these spaces are
codified as colors that modulate in size to correspond with their use.

23. Ji Sun Lee_residing_digital illustration and video_2012

24. sharing
Most things we repeatedly do in our lives are operated within a family. I visualized the photo
documentation of a typical family that has a 41 years old husband, a 40 years old wife, and
an 8-year-old kid regarding each photos as each of their one year. A man and a woman given
birth in a similar time and live each of their own life. They found each other and shared 3
years going out together, even sharing 2002 world cup wearing same red T-shirts. They got
married and their kid has become 8 years old. All of these procedures of their lives are visual-
ized into colors.

25. Ji Sun Lee_sharing 1_digital illustration and video_2012

29. Ji Sun Lee_sharing 2_digital illustration_2012

30. JI SUN LEE
New media artist and interaction designer Ji Sun Lee studied Industrial Design at Sookmyung
Women’s University and Interactive Telectommunications at New York University. She has
worked for major technology companies in Korea as an engineer and IT consultant. She is
currently a doctoral candidate in Visual Communication Design at Seoul National University
and working on projects of image visualization using processing and physical computing. Ji
Sun Lee currently teaches at Sookmyung Women’s University as a full-time faculty at Visual
Communication Design department.

31. EXHIBITION
Quotidian-Documenting Everyday Life, MediaNoche-The 2nd Solo Show, New York, NY, 2012
Tech D.I.Y., Maker Faire 2012 in Seoul, Seoul, Korea, 2012
Urban Meditation, MediaNoche-The 1st Solo Show, New York, NY, 2011
Urban Meditation, SIGGRAPH Asia 2010, Seoul, Korea, 2010
Tech D.I.Y., SIGGRAPH 2008, Los Angeles, CA, 2008
Tech D.I.Y., Maker Faire 2008, San Mateo, CA, 2008
The Meditative Mind, ITP on the Big Screen at IAC, New York, NY, 2007
The Meditative Mind, Design Now, Seoul, Korea, 2007
The Meditative Mind & Tech D.I.Y., ITP Winter Show 2007, New York, NY, 2007
Affection, All light! All Right?, Seoul, Korea, 2007
Secret Tree, Maker Fare 2007, Austin, TX, 2007
Four Gracious Plants, NYC SIGRAPH-Metro CAF, New York, NY, 2007
Affection, Sony Wonder Technology Lab, New York, NY, 2007
Interactive Cake, Maker Faire 2007, San Francisco, CA2007
Affection & Interactive Cake, NYU ITP Spring Show, New York, NY, 2007
Four Gracious Plants, Screening of Video/Animation Work, New York, NY, 2007
Tales of Grim & Tea Ceremony, NYU ITP Winter Show, New York, NY, 2006
AWARD
Best Education Website, SNOW.orkr, Web Award Korea, Korea, 2010
Semi-finalist, Documenting New York’s Diversity, Adobe Design Achievement Awards, USA,
2007
Winner, Documenting New York’s Diversity, Expression-Photography magazine, USA, 2007

32. Ji Sun Lee’s 2nd Solo Show in New Yrok
Quotidian - Documenting Everyday Life
Media Noche in New York
07 13 2012 to 08 10 2012
1355 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10029, USA
T. +1 646.228.7950
www.medianoche.us
* Special thanks to
show curator : Judith Escalona
editorial design assistant : Yuseung Song
video production assistant : Chaerim Lim
digital illustation production assistant : Yuna Park, Yuseung Song, Dahye Kim, Sunghye Lee, Borim Lee
** The show is made by research fund grand from Sookmyung Wemen’s University.

33. This work is licensed under
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

34. JiSunLee.net
sun.neofuture@gmail.com
+82 (0)10 7385 9373
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twitter : jisunlee