Space of the city makes us experience various senses based on materiality. Light, visual touch and smell not only stimulate the individual sense but, beyond it, also provide new stimulation, a kind of abstract stimulation, by mixing each other and combining them again. The general sense remembered and reorganized in a specific time arises in various ways such as touch or sound. This is the reason why the city that has us experience a new sense, a kind of the transformed sense, becomes a space for thinking in the aspect of art and culture.
In working with the image of urban space as a material, this study pays attention to correlation between the city and city life and the material foundation that enabled the space of the city to be ? in other words, correlation with the materials penetrating into the time - aiming to reinterpret artworks of this researcher, who made into images in the abstract and sensitive way characteristics of cities, which had a new paradigm through the Industrial Revolution after the 18th century and dramatically changed through the rapid development of technology, especially characteristics of modern cities. Particularly, this researcher will use ‘optical fiber’ as the main material to identify the possibility of ‘optical fiber’ as the main medium expressing artworks and will expand the range of the material used for fiber art through experiments on various symbols of modern cities that optical fiber can draw. This series of the work will also function as an antitype of the future direction for this researcher’s work.
As a matter of fact, optical fiber this researcher aims to analyze and express urban space of modern times as the formative art is an unfamiliar material yet in the field of fiber art. However, the very optical fiber is considered a material that expresses most the modern cities, represented through informatization, globalization, speed and image not only in the aspect of content but also of form. Above all, revolution of information movement which optical fiber facilitated broke the previous boundaries cities had and expanded the range of the city to the world. Speed in the modern city made rhythm perfectly different from the life until now, and consequently achieved totally different level of human and urban lives; optical fiber is the raw material used for information and communications technology and corresponds to the obvious power of urban space of modern times and the image of high speed at the same time. Moreover, the light that optical fiber gives out represents spectacles and ‘night life’ of cities and strengthens their actual capacity at the same time. If the city is what makes scattered social energy and social functions, which are not correlated at all, gathered to one to make a powerful and specially new function, the very optical fiber could be the material that shows this nature of cities.
The composition of this study except Introduction and Conclusion is as follows:
First of all, Chapter 2 examines various theoretical backgrounds of the urban space. Section 1 studies sociologist Henri Refebvre’s space theory to thoroughly investigate novelty and the meaning of urban space, and discusses what implications the polysemy of space he asserts can give to eyes of us, who try to investigate the modern city. Section 2 will select Walter Benjamin as a major case and analyze through their own cognition and thinking methods the urban space, which becomes the source of inspiration for artists and thinkers. Section 3 studies changes of cities and factors that drove those changes, and investigates what relationship construction materials, which have sharply changed from ancient times to modern times because of those factors, and the life of the time have. Based on this, Chapter 3 considers appearance backgrounds of optical fiber and its meaning and importance as a medium in the formative art, and explains the significance of optical fiber as a medium that expresses the modern city.
Lastly, Chapter 4 analyzes how the image of the urban space of modern times is projected through optical fiber in this researcher’s artworks. First, how the artworks in the exhibition <A Walk in the City> tried to symbolically express impermanence, speed and synesthesia in the aspect of communication aroused in the urban space was paid attention to and explained. Second, in the artworks named <Thoughts of Urban Space>, the necessity to investigate urban space of modern times beyond dichotomous understanding of space ? inside and outside, and complexity and simplicity ? by metaphorically projecting interpenetration of the inside and outside of urban buildings and visibility of the city and its importance will be emphasized.
Urban space can provide as a metaphor a clue that reads sociocultural phenomena and become an object of philosophical thinking. Cities are also the place that facilitates experience of a new sense for many things. Besides, it is the space for thinking artistically and culturally. A new sense such as the visual touch is directly connected to artistic experience. It is the very moment that strollers think taking a walk in the city and viewers look at the urban space as the reproduced space. This researcher paid attention to that visual stimulation became routine in cities and put visibility on the front through optical fiber to express characteristics of experience of the urban space. It is to provide an opportunity to realize the essence of experience through response of visual perception.
In addition to that optical fiber itself is an important material for information communication, this researcher tried to show that spectacle images made through light could give prominence to characteristics of experience of urban space. Through this, this researcher could identify the possibility of optical fiber as a material for fiber art, and could have an effect of expanding the expression realm of fiber art by doing space installation work using optical fiber in the field of fiber art, which had a characteristic of crafts regarded as a secondary art emphasizing its usefulness. This researcher will more strive, based on these processes, in the future work to study and express the expansion of space and the problem of time property that space has, by mixing new materials corresponding to the image of cities and optical fiber.