2020 Ars Electronica Garden SEOUL

Korea National University of Arts presents the Ars Electronica Garden Seoul Festival from September 9 to 13 – in Seoul and the online world. Korea National University of Arts was invited to the Ars Electronica Festival to present diverse ideas on natural and regional boundaries and digital networks related to the inherent physical limitations triggered by the COVID-19 Pandemics. In 2020, instead of rallying in Linz, Austria, for the Ars Electronica Festival, more than 120 participating organizations hold events under the theme of Garden in each region, while the Ars Electronica Festival organized a kind of digital travel agency that connected them online. Korea National University of Arts focuses on the regional characteristics of Seoul, Korea's representative city, through nature, society, and technical environment, as the overall “garden”. The approach raises the topic of what kind of garden we will take care of in the future of "Third Life," where reality and virtual overlap.

Director : Dongyean Lee 

(Vice President of Korea National University of Arts, Professor of School of Korean Traditional Arts, KARTS)

At  the end of the 20th century, cities in South Korea, demonstrated two distinct characteristics. First, the cities were transformed into a sea of apartment complexes. Second, high-speed Internet and digital technology became ubiquitous, which resulted in the creation of unique online communities. The former focuses on the collective and is a physical space, whereas the latter is more fragmented and virtual. Several cities of the world are similarly structured; however, cities in South Korea seems to naturally balance the tangible world with its more flexible virtual counterpart. We dream of a city for the future––an epic Smart City where these two spaces harmoniously coexist. 

The “Garden of Third Life” is a practical and metaphorical concept that explores what life is like during this pandemic. The phrase “Third Life” implies that we have reached a new third space in which we must live our lives. If the “First Life” is the physical world we live in and the “Second Life” is the virtual, synthetic world, the “Third Life” is where both elements exist together, and through their interaction, disintegrate barriers by adding virtual aspects to real life and real aspects to the virtual one, and facilitates living within that intersection. Technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, holograms, and the Internet of Things invite us into  the Third Life.

The Third Life concept emphasizes that embracing ecology and technology is no longer optional, but is a part of our fate. Living in the age of disaster capitalism, risk society, the Anthropocene, and the pandemic means that we cannot support human life through taking technology forward without an ecological imagination. Similarly, an ecological imagination without technological progress will lead to a lonesome life like that of Robinson Crusoe, or would be unable to stop the tsunami  of global consumerism. In response, the “Third Life Garden” is a practical and metaphoric concept that imagines future human ecology, while simultaneously undertaking a serious reflection on technology.