▲ Infinite Space.(Photo : Refik Anadol Studio)     ©World Lighting News.

▲ WDCH Dreams.(Photo : Anadol Studio)     ©World Lighting News.

●Written by : Min-Woo Lee / Journalist.

From December 20, 2019 to January 3 2020, the outer wall of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza(DDP) building, designed by Zaha Hadid, became a huge exhibition hall.

As the sun sets and the darkness falls on the city, a large light show that combines colorful light, video and music on the silver curved exterior of the DDP's signature. Its overwhelming scale and unstoppable dynamics have completely changed the night view of Dongdaemun.

Seoul Metropolitan Government and Seoul Design Foundation (CEO:  Kyung-Ran Choi) started the winter light festival 'DDP LIGHT' in 2019, using the front of the DDP building as a large screen to show various media facades.

'Media Facade' is a technique of projecting images onto a building's exterior wall by projection, and it is a visual art showing various contents.

The name 'DDP Light' means that DDP, a city building, becomes a public screen that expresses the stories of public(people) with arts and technology and allows citizens to experience the material of 'light'.

The city plans to develop the DDP Light into a representative night tourist content such as Vivid Sydney, which attracts tourists in late May, Australia's winter season. DDP is expected to grow into a cultural asset of Seoul and contribute to revitalization of local economy and tourism, especially in Dongdaemun.

Many cities around the world also hold late-winter light festivals, which are heavily used by tourists. In addition to Vivid Sydney, Harbin, China (January-February), Osaka, Japan (December), Belgium Ghent (February), France Lyon (December), Amsterdam, Netherlands (December-January), and Helsinki, Finland (January) A famous light festival is held on the back.

However, 'DDP Light' is different from the existing festival of light and will impress citizens. The theme of 2019, the first year, is `` SEOUL HAEMONG, '' which shows the history, present and future of Seoul and Dongdaemun as data visualization contents.

Refik Anadol, a world-renowned media designer from Turkey, participated as the main writer, and Min Se-hee, who leads the media facade production using AI, worked as a general director.

Lepic Anadol is a first-generation visual artist that uses AI to project dynamic images into public architecture. He is well known for his media facade "Dream," which was shown on the outer wall of the Walt Disney Concert Hall to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Los Angeles Philharmonic last year.

Through parametric data, which is a way of expressing visual stories through buildings, it is gaining criticism that viewers create a completely different dimension of space as if entering a 3D experience space.

Se-Hee Min is the first Korean TED Fellow. His works have been featured in TED 2011, TED Global 2012, Lift Asia, and CNN Asia.

In 2018, the Seoul City Museum of Art, 'Media City Biennale' planned an art exhibition 'AI' using AI, and visualized the AI environment that reflects human behavior through data learning. I'm drawing.

It collects photographs showing the past of Seoul and Dongdaemun and Seoul photograph data taken by citizens, and interprets and recombines them with technologies such as AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning to express them with light and images.

It is an evaluation that the stories of various people are included in the works through the voluntary participation of citizens. Data art is a new type of media art that uses digital science to visually reconstruct data.

In relation to this, Seoul Metropolitan City's Lepic Anadol writer and Min Se-hee, General Director, participated in Seoul to introduce 'DDP Light' and 'SEOUL HAEMONG'. There is a bar.

Starting with this year, Seoul City and Seoul Design Foundation will select new topics every year and collaborate with domestic and foreign media designers to showcase lite contents.

Meanwhile, DDP, which celebrated its 5th anniversary in 2019, has become an attraction in Seoul, attracting more than 24,000 people a day. Starting from 688 million people in 2014, the first year of opening, it increased by 11.5% annually, exceeding 10 million last year.

It runs an average of 128 contents per year, has a facility utilization rate of more than 78%, and shows attractive contents not only to design experts but also to citizens and tourists.

Choi Kyung-ran, CEO of Seoul Design Foundation, said, “DDP Light is unique light content that utilizes the unique appearance of DDP. We will develop the Dongdaemun area as a representative light contents festival that will lead the future of DDP by operating it as the representative night tourist content in winter when the number of tourists is greatly reduced. ”“ The story of the public can be expressed with art and technology to share with the citizens. "I want to continue that vitality."