Could the city make you feel like a familiar stranger? Imagine such a feeling if we were separated and then reimagined our vision and perspective.

We navigate the streets of the city we call home daily, confident in our familiarity with the surroundings. However, upon entering PMQ and experiencing this year's exceptional collaboration, "REWORLD Type 2," our perspective was transformed. The intricate arrangement of prisms revealed a stunning new view of the city.

The urban screen is an innovative creation by the installation art studio Kimchi and Chips from Seoul, South Korea. It features over 1,000 micro-prisms driven by precision motors. These micro-prisms refract the surrounding environment, rotating and shifting to produce dynamic images. Kimchi and Chips say, "REWORLD captures various visual elements from the environment—such as weather, the spectrum of light, and human movements—and recombines them into extraordinary new imagery."

These continuously flowing images merge with the city's architecture, providing information, conveying ideas, and enhancing the urban aesthetic. Kimchi and Chips, a creative duo consisting of Korean artist Mimi Son and British artist Elliot Woods, hosted their first major exhibition in Hong Kong, a city they deeply admire for its unique character. “Hong Kong is known for its nostalgic yet distinctly cyberpunk style. This duality of combining the past and the future resonates with the concept of REWORLD, as this visual technology work explores new ways of perceiving the city,” Kimchi and Chips stated.

REWORLD Type 1 was previously exhibited in a park in Seoul that had been abandoned for a century and once served as a military base for both the Japanese and American armies. This allowed visitors to recognize the location's historical significance through the installation's lens. REWORLD Type 2 is in PMQ, a site with a similar historical background. “It was once closed from the public but reopened ten years ago, bringing new meaning and vitality to the people of Hong Kong.” In alignment with deTour 2024's theme, “Having → Being: Designing Inner Worlds,” the duo made several technical adjustments to the installation to ensure that the images seamlessly blend into the audience's view and create an explicit, dynamic visual scene. They used a new aluminum composite material as a circuit board and manually applied nail polish to each LED light to adjust its brightness.

American philosopher Donna J. Haraway's famous quote serves as their creation's motto: “What matters is what stories create worlds, and how worlds make stories.” l—just as Kimchi and Chips aim to inspire new ways of seeing through technology.

The duo describes their work through an "image system." These systems generate images that provide a tangible representation of imagination, allowing it to enter the physical world. They believe that different image systems—such as mobile phone screens, printed posters, and televisions—each have a unique personality, which is also reflected in the images they create. As a result, developing new image systems enables them to forge a fresh relationship between reality and imagination.

Moreover, technology serves as a medium for exploration, presenting outcomes as public installations to inspire new ideas in shared spaces. Some notable works include "HALO" which uses 99 mechanical mirrors to transform sunlight into a misty halo suspended in the air. This installation was exhibited in London in 2018 and in Seoul in 2021. "ANOTHER MOON," another work that collects sunlight during the day and projects a "second moon" visible within a kilometer at night using lasers, was displayed in Germany in 2021 and Greece in 2022. The "Light Barrier" series employs hundreds of concave mirrors to create a sea of light, exploring themes such as reality versus illusion, materiality versus immateriality, and existence versus nothingness.

As the audience immerses themselves in the carefully crafted "reality" of Kimchi and Chips, the duo hopes that people will not only appreciate the flare but also become curious about how it is produced. This creates a genuine interaction between the artworks and their surroundings. "For us, technology is not just a medium for presenting concepts; it is a direct carrier of the entire work's ideas." They explain.

In their work, "HALO," the creators emphasize the interplay between mechanical and natural elements such as water, mist, sunlight, and wind. The moon is a recurring theme; while technology is often opposed to nature, Kimchi and Chips view technology as an integral part of the natural world. "Our creations use technology to establish a relationship with nature. From our perspective, there is no distinction between technology and nature; both have evolved together. For instance, certain patterns that reflect reality—such as waves, metaphors, and language—naturally exist in both technology and nature, demonstrating that they originate from the same root."

The relationship between technology and capital emphasizes the resulting conflicts and dominance issues. It acknowledges that many people feel overwhelmed by technology, and the emergence of artificial intelligence only adds to this confusion. As technology becomes increasingly integrated with governance, commercial interests, and social structures, there is hope that art can serve as a tool to help people understand technology better.

Kimchi and Chips' latest work, "Unread Characters," is aligned with technological advancements and incorporates artificial intelligence. They believe that the societal impact of artificial intelligence will be comparable to the rise of the Internet. By enhancing technological awareness, deepening users' thoughts and expressions, and nurturing the development of personal values, they aim to help society navigate this technological revolution. They assert that art can play a direct and significant role in achieving these objectives.

If you have the chance to experience such evolving work, which will help us reconsider our place in the city and environment, Kimchi and Chips have a few tips for you:

Allow your eyes some time to adjust to "REWORLD." Spend 30 seconds browsing through the work rather than just looking at it. After doing so, you will start to perceive the images created by the system rather than focusing on the system itself.

Revisit deTour 2024 information: https://detour.hk/2024