London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Media Skins: some photos from the Edinburgh installations

A few photographs, taken yesterday, of the Media Skins installation in Edinburgh as part of the 2013 International Festival. The installation was hung on the main frontage of the Festival Theatre, and also on hoardings in the square outside the Usher Hall. A poster in the Festival Theatre gave the following information:

For this installation, Kim Hyung-su was inspired by Scottish mathematician, physicist, astronomer and inventor David Brewster, who invented the kaleidoscope in 1817. He used three identically sized mirrors fixed inside a cylinder with small coloured pieces of paper or celluloid which, when viewed through a small hole, revealed complex patterns and shapes created by reflexions.

The word kaleidoscope is derived from words in ancient Greek which together mean an instrument for looking at beautiful shapes. The Korean for kaleidoscope is 만화경, which means the same image will never appear again.

Using images captured via satellites Arirang 2 and 3 from the Korean Space Research Institute, Kim Hyung-su has brought images of Edinburgh, North Korea, South Korea, San Francisco, the Nile, the Amazon, Dubai, New York, Sydney, Rome, London, Shanghai, New Delhi and Paris, together with images of craters from around the world to create a kaleidoscopic film.

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