Seunghee You

                                                                                                                           







 Many people have likely experienced online identity verification processes that ask users to distinguish whether they are a robot or a human by selecting certain images from a set of deliberately ambiguous pictures. This method, used to differentiate robots from humans, is extremely simple, yet it demands a few seconds of focused attention and creates a slight sense of tension. At one moment, however, this tension suddenly felt unsettling to me. Although I had believed that humans were superior to technology, the rapid advancement of technology in the 21st century has quietly accumulated feelings of fear and doubt within me, producing this tension without my awareness. This tension may be both a warning and an opportunity presented by technology to humanity.

As Walter Benjamin (1892.7.15–1940.9.27) argued, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, art in the age of technological reproduction no longer invites traditional modes of reception such as contemplation or immersion, but instead encourages distraction and dispersion. As technology advances at an accelerating pace, the world we encounter appears fragmented, instantaneous, and discontinuous—composed of a series of shocks and collisions. According to Benjamin, modern visual experience inherently carries a shocking quality. Within digital media, images and videos are uploaded endlessly, and the seamless transition to the next clip causes thought processes to become fragmented and momentary. As a result, modes of contemplation and immersion feel increasingly awkward in the digital age.

Yet contemplation and immersion are uniquely human capacities and fundamental characteristics that only humans possess. Therefore, the act of staring intently for a few seconds while experiencing slight tension—such as during image-based verification—may have become an indicator distinguishing humans from machines. However, the structure of digital media systems erodes these uniquely human qualities of contemplation and immersion, allowing only the dispersed mode of technological reception to dominate. Digital images generally demand not deep understanding but rather acceptance as a total image or atmosphere. In other words, instead of forming deep, individual relationships with objects, we tend to scan and pass over them superficially. Consequently, as the time allotted for contemplation and immersion continues to shrink, art today must serve as a means of restoring that opportunity.

In the artwork Disappearance, a star appears on the left and a cow on the right, with the word “소별” (so-byeol) written above the cow. A robot recognizing this image would be able to identify the star and the cow, but would fail to recognize the word “소별,” as it does not exist as a standard term. A human, however, would attempt to find a relationship between the title Disappearance and the work, or connect the images of the cow and the star with the invented word “소별,” imagining the meaning of disappearance in various ways. Just as humans can perceive ambiguous differences that robots cannot detect, they experience individual specificity precisely through ambiguity in images.

New technological discourses such as NFTs, digital currencies, and virtual worlds may be the greatest shocks contemporary society has yet experienced. Although these technologies still feel unfamiliar and difficult, the world continues to replace itself relentlessly with newer technologies. With each shift toward new technological paradigms, certain things inevitably disappear. Yet the ability to generate new meanings from what disappears is what will enable humans to create a world in which they can coexist with technology.