{"id":4046,"date":"2025-10-17T14:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T14:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/?p=4046"},"modified":"2025-10-20T16:09:43","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T16:09:43","slug":"identity-and-hyun-young-ohs-coded-landscapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/?p=4046","title":{"rendered":"Identity and Hyun-Young Oh\u2019s Coded Landscapes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Hyun-Young Oh\u2019s Barcode Landscape: Landscapes of a Coded World 2025<\/em>, the notion of identity undergoes a radical reconfiguration through the reductive logic of quantification. Drawing from Byung-Chul Han\u2019s critique of the \u201cdatafication\u201d of existence \u2014 where the self, culture and even nature is rendered as transparent, calculable and performative \u2014 Oh\u2019s digitalised East Asian landscapes of multitudinous barcodes, QR codes and Bitcoin motifs function as contemporary vistas of a quantified cosmos. The formative identity of subjects within today\u2019s electronically-mediated society \u2014 what Han calls the digital totality \u2014 which is no longer constituted through an imaginal proliferation of mythical metaphors, but through digitized codes, results into a homogenizing datafication of reality, in which the mythical opacity that forms identity is erased. Every mythical image is reduced into an algorithmic code; and every poetic idea collapses into an abstract equation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hyun-Young
Hyun-Young Oh,\u00a0<\/em>Barcode Landscape 202522<\/em><\/strong>, mixed media on canvas, 135 x 61 cm<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hyun-Young Oh vividly renders these cataclysmic shifts of electronic devouring through the intricate use of traditional Korean iconography. For instance, the cosmogonic mountain ridges of The Painting of the Sun, Moon and Five Peaks<\/em> or the Irworobongdo<\/em> \u2014 a dynastic symbol of the Joseon royal court \u2014 are reframed here as a digital womb of decontextualized codes, while the winding rivers, towering peaks and spectral moons of the sansuhwa painting style are translated into infinitesimal grids of information. These digitalised landscapes of randomised inventory codes and infinite-spawning quick response codes no longer anchor any type of cultural belonging; they become anonymous data, circulating freely across endless, circulating networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From within these hyper-networked mountains and the glow of electronic moonlight, compact masses of anonymous metropolises ascend like shattered fragments of a global motherboard all the way up to the fragmented sky; an architectural foreshadowing of digital chaos, before it is compressed into the lucid flatness of the screen held in the palm of the hand. In this digital fever-dream any regional identity deteriorates into global anonymity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hyun-Young
Hyun-Young Oh,\u00a0<\/em>Barcode Landscape 202526<\/em><\/strong>, mixed media on canvas, 135 x 61 cm<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this way, Hyun-Young Oh reveals that identity, that ceases to be national, territorial or genealogical and becomes something automatically generated, decoded and recoded through an endless digital circulation like an ouroboric feedback loop. For Marshall McLuhan, each medium reshapes the human sensorium and creates collective identity; the typewriter and print culture of the Renaissance undergirded the formation of national consciousness through linear and sequential thought. In contrast, digital media engender an international simultaneity. An engulfing \u201cglobal village\u201d that dissolves borders and hierarchies, replacing narrative continuity with networked multiplicity. But Oh\u2019s iridescent landscapes of digital identifiers and ever-generating bitcoins neither lament nor celebrate this unparalleled transformation, but instead they delve into its paradox. The analogue gestures of gentle brushwork dreamily merge with the convoluted geometry of digital computation. \u2028<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hyun-Young
Hyun-Young Oh,\u00a0<\/em>Barcode Landscape 202527<\/em><\/strong>, mixed media on canvas, 135 x 61 cm<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Traditional Korean iconography is not here to be read as a nostalgic ruin or a reactionary remnant of the past; rather, it functions as a recurring leitmotif of a newly emerged digital cosmology. The system-generated cipher codes and reprogrammed QR patterns do not hopelessly liquidate these enchanted panoramas of mystical mountaintops \u2014such as the primordial Mount T\u2019aebaek of Korean mythology \u2014 but they re-translate them into new contemporary idiom of today\u2019s hyper-technological culture; tradition, once confined to charred horizontal boundaries on a two-dimensional plane, is now refracted through these mainframe codes of digital cryptocurrencies and scanning e-images into a mobile and vertical circuit that traverses the entire inhabited world with inexhaustible bandwidth. \u2028\u2028 In Oh\u2019s fluorescent canvases, identity is no longer a static essence but a continuously updating system; a cultural algorithm that retains traces of history even as it generates new mythical topographies. In encoding traditional Korean painting into the circuitry of the digital, Hyun-Young Oh profoundly succeeds in reforming a hybrid interface, merging thus the abysmal gulf of tradition and digitality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos In Hyun-Young Oh\u2019s Barcode Landscape: Landscapes of a Coded World 2025, the notion of identity undergoes a radical reconfiguration through the reductive logic of quantification. Drawing from Byung-Chul Han\u2019s critique of the \u201cdatafication\u201d of existence \u2014 where the self, culture and even nature is rendered as transparent, calculable and performative \u2014 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Identity and Hyun-Young Oh\u2019s Coded Landscapes”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4046"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4062,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046\/revisions\/4062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}