Stone for Decoding #01 reinterprets Suseok (壽石, Korean scholar’s stones) for the digital age. Historically, Suseok functioned in East Asia as objects of contemplation, valued for the traces of time and chance inscribed by nature onto their surfaces. The work examines what form this tradition might take under contemporary conditions, given how digital media reshapes the way we see the world.
The artist travels across Korea in search of stones bearing a particular sang (相): forms and presences that evoke a pareidolic perception, whereby landscapes or living creatures are discovered in the stone’s accidental shapes. Rather than physically collecting these stones, the artist records their forms and surfaces as 3D scan data, together with the sounds of water and wind from their original sites. The stone is thus understood not as a self-contained object, but as something formed and transformed by its environment.
Once converted into data, the stone is freed from its original scale and weight. Parts of different stones are selected, resized, and recombined, dissolving the hierarchy between a massive boulder and a small pebble. Through sand 3D printing, this composite is materialized in a single day as a “third stone.” Geological time is compressed into a day, raising the question of whether this new stone can still serve as a medium for contemplation.
The “third stone” does not end with its printed form. Its physical form, sounds gathered from its original site, subtle changes in the exhibition space, and the movement and presence of visitors are woven together in real time. This continuous interplay gives rise to an active Suseok – one that is not simply observed, but changes with its surroundings. The visitor becomes part of this process, thinking with the Suseok rather than merely contemplating it.
By bringing nature and the artificial, matter and data, past and present, stillness and change into relation, Stone for Decoding #01 explores how contemporary technology does more than replace objects of the past, transforming the ways we perceive, think about, and sense objects, thereby generating new possibilities for sensory experience.
