PROJECTS

2022.07.01

Due to climate change, natural disasters that have not been experienced before are taking place all over the world. In a barren environment, the ballerina has lost her place to dance. Audiences wearing goggles and gloves meet a ballerina in a virtual space and rescue her in crisis.

This is the story line of the new technology convergence metaverse content <Ballet Metanique> created by Art & Technology Lab (AT Lab) of Korea National University of Arts with a research team from Pohang University of Science and Technology.

Realistic Metaverse Content <Ballet Metanique> (Director Park Eok) is part of the research and development project of the "Cultural Content R&D Professional Training Project Leading Graduate School of Culture and Technology" organized by the Korea Creative Content Agency's Culture, Sports and Tourism Technology Promotion Center, and is produced by Han Ye-jong and Pohang University of Technology (President Kim Moo-hwan, hereinafter POSTECH), a research team specializing in high-tech content, and GPI Crew and Birdhand, a high-tech content company. By incorporating current R&D results, such as network performance systems and haptic technologies that vibrate in response to sound, into the work, Valera provides visitors with a new experience that transcends the boundaries of art and science.

<Ballet Metanique> was the first Korean university to be invited exclusively to the 'Ars Electronica Festival 2022' campus category held in Linz, Austria, on September 7-11, 2022.

The Ars Electronica Festival (hereinafter referred to as the Ars Festival), which began in 1979 and celebrates its 43rd anniversary this year, is a convergence art festival that boasts history and tradition enough to be called the Cannes Film Festival in the field of media art by showcasing performances and exhibitions that combine cutting-edge technology and art, and is the world's largest media art event, with more than 200,000 participants visiting online every year and more than 110,000 visiting the site.

The campus sector, where Han Ye-jong AT Lab works were invited, is one of the detailed programs of the Ars Festival, where universities and students from around the world who run technology/art convergence curriculum participate to share their skills with each other, and leading convergence research universities such as MIT Media Lab and Bauhaus University participate to achieve various results every year.

"The Cultural Contents R&D Professional Training Project" by the Culture, Sports and Tourism Technology Promotion Center affiliated with the Korea Creative Content Agency, which enabled the performance of the invited work <Ballet Metaniques>, is a research and development support project aimed at fostering high-quality cultural technology professionals by supporting the development of convergence technologies of high-tech and cultural contents genres. The Korea National University of Arts is carrying out its second year of projects by POSTECH, GPI Crew, and Birdhand as joint research and development institutes. About 30 students are participating in the opening of content-led R&D courses and running industry-academic projects.