Rotating Weights
2025
To Transport Time Exhibition
Ho-Gae Train Station, Ulsan, South Korea
LED display, headphones, electronic weights, LED lights, dimensions Variable
Ulsan is South Korea's principal industrial hub, home to major shipbuilding, petrochemical, and automotive industries. Its economy is defined by production on a vast scale, yet its population structure reveals a quieter story of labour division and generational continuity.
Rotating Weights is exhibited at the decommissioned Ho-Gae Station, a remnant of Ulsan's industrial railway once used to transport materials across factories and ports. The site now stands still, its silence echoing the persistence of labour even after the machinery has stopped.
This work transforms regional labour statistics into an interactive sound and visual installation. Two load cells are mounted on the wall at different heights, one for children and one for adults. An LED screen displays a real-time animated pie chart while sound plays through headphones.
The simulated data engine draws from Ulsan's industry-specific business data between 2020 and 2023 (KOSIS). Each segment of the pie chart corresponds to a data category, and its circular position maps onto an invisible musical staff. As data values fluctuate, these positions shift vertically to form a C-sharp major scale. The sound is composed of short vocal tones recorded in the artist's own voice, giving voice to data that typically remains silent and abstract.
When visitors apply weight to the load cells, harmonies emerge. Each new pressure adds a note to the existing scale, and the data visualisation regenerates in response. When both load cells are pressed at once, a distinct pattern appears on screen and a richer harmony forms. The interaction becomes an act of shared balance, where individual gestures shape collective sound.
Industrial data here becomes something felt rather than merely analysed. By translating metrics of labour into a shared act of balance, the work turns statistical abstraction into embodied continuity. The two heights invite different generations to participate together, transforming economic information into a gesture of relation and care. Harmony doesn't come from precision or output but from coexistence, from the moment two bodies press into the same system and leave resonance in its flow.
Rotating Weights: Interactive Data Sonification
Ulsan is South Korea's principal industrial hub, home to major shipbuilding, petrochemical, and automotive industries. Its economy is defined by production on a vast scale, yet its population structure reveals a quieter story of labour division and generational continuity.
Rotating Weights is exhibited at the decommissioned Ho-Gae Station, a remnant of Ulsan's industrial railway once used to transport materials across factories and ports. The site now stands still, its silence echoing the persistence of labour even after the machinery has stopped.
This work transforms regional labour statistics into an interactive sound and visual installation. Two load cells are mounted on the wall at different heights, one for children and one for adults. An LED screen displays a real-time animated pie chart while sound plays through headphones.
The simulated data engine draws from Ulsan's industry-specific business data between 2020 and 2023 (KOSIS). Each segment of the pie chart corresponds to a data category, and its circular position maps onto an invisible musical staff. As data values fluctuate, these positions shift vertically to form a C-sharp major scale. The sound is composed of short vocal tones recorded in the artist's own voice, giving voice to data that typically remains silent and abstract.
When visitors apply weight to the load cells, harmonies emerge. Each new pressure adds a note to the existing scale, and the data visualisation regenerates in response. When both load cells are pressed at once, a distinct pattern appears on screen and a richer harmony forms. The interaction becomes an act of shared balance, where individual gestures shape collective sound.
Industrial data here becomes something felt rather than merely analysed. By translating metrics of labour into a shared act of balance, the work turns statistical abstraction into embodied continuity. The two heights invite different generations to participate together, transforming economic information into a gesture of relation and care. Harmony doesn't come from precision or output but from coexistence, from the moment two bodies press into the same system and leave resonance in its flow.
Rotating Weights: Interactive Data Sonification