Old Korean sites find new fame with fancy media light facades

Korean heritage sites like Gyeongbok Palace and Suwon Hwaseong Fortress gain popularity with modern media facades, showcasing historical themes and attracting visitors.

Multimedia artist Lee Lee-nam’s “Gwanghwa Sansudo″ is projected onto the front gates of Gyeongbok Palace in central Seoul as part of 2023 Seoul Light Gwanghwamun. [CULTURAL HERITAGE ADMINISTRATION]

Gyeongbok Palace’s Geunjeong Hall in central Seoul lights up with ilwolobongdo, the famous depiction of the sun, moon and five peaks used in paintings and folding screens that symbolize power and eternity.

Ilwolobongdo depictions were placed behind the king’s thrones during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910).

Blending in well with the skyscrapers of Seoul, another media facade follows soon after, showing all the phases of the moon.

These are all part of 2023 Seoul Light Gwanghwamun, a media facade show hosted and organized by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, which continues until Jan. 21. Using the palace walls that span 400 meters (0.2 miles) as a canvas, images are projected onto the structure with bright lights.

One full session of the show lasts 35 minutes and features the works of five multimedia artists: Eper Digital’s “Elemental Construction vol. 7,” Nick Azidis’ “Timeless Light,” Lee Lee-nam’s “Gwanghwa Sansudo,” Jeremy Oury’s “Attraction” and Felix Frank’s “Ethereal Flux.” Four sessions are shown every Friday, Saturday and Sunday and begin at the start of each hour from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

On every other weekday, an eight-minute light show is projected during the same hours.

The Seoul Light festival began in 2019, at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Jung District, central Seoul, and has since expanded to Gwanghwamun Square, but this is the first time in the event’s history for the event to spotlight a historical landmark.

Media art is projected onto the Mireuksa Stone Pagoda in Iksan, North Jeolla. [CULTURAL HERITAGE ADMINISTRATION]

It’s generally more convenient to screen a media facade on the side of a building, since they tend to be flat and rectangular — the Seoul Square building in front of Seoul Station in central Seoul is one example. But recently, heritage sites like Gyeongbok Palace, fortress walls, Buddhist temples and archeological sites have started getting more of the spotlight.

According to Koh Joo-won, a professor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts, the granite stone at such sites are capable of being a canvas as long as they are standing upright.

The Suwon Hwaseong Fortress also hosted a media facade show for three years straight and saw a large uptick in its visitors, especially during the nighttime showing hours. The event took the theme of a ceremonial walk from King Jeongjo’s reign during the Joseon Dynasty, as it was in 1796 when the fortress was built. It was designated as a World Heritage site by Unesco in 1997.

Media art is screened at Suwon Hwaseong Fortress in 2022. [HERITAGE LAB]

The first edition, which was in 2021 during the pandemic, saw over 300,000 visitors, and business sales in the surrounding area increased 60 percent compared to the year before. In the latest edition, which was held from Oct. 6 to Nov. 4 last year, there were over 480,000 visitors.

A total of five Unesco-designated World Heritage sites, including the aforementioned fortress and the Mireuksa Temple in Iksan, North Jeolla, showed off trendy media art in 2021. Giving these heritage sites a new chance to shine was a way to increase their accessibility during the pandemic and for local governments and the Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA) to develop cultural content using the latest digital technology.

This year, the festivities continue in seven cities: Jinju, Suwon, Gangneung, Gongju, Iksan, Buyeo and Goheung.

But there are more factors to consider when screening media art on the exterior walls of a building, as opposed to an indoor venue. The intensity of the light radiation and sound emission need to be much stronger as it has to overpower other nearby lights or noises.

A media facade show at the Gongsan Fortress in Gongju, South Chungcheong [CULTURAL HERITAGE ADMINISTRATION]

In 2008, when Prof. Koh presented Korea’s first-ever media facade on Seoul City Hall’s old office building in central Seoul, he described it as a “public art show that requires state-of-the-art technology to fill a vast screen while simultaneously capturing the attention of random passersby.”

This may be one reason why fortresses and temples located in the rural regions are a better fit to host media art shows. They tend to be quieter and have less bright lights at night than in the city. In the case of the Mireuksa Stone Pagoda, five screens each 130 meters long were installed in the space between the East Pagoda and the West Pagoda. As soon as the lights went out, the pagodas disappeared like a mirage, eliciting exclamations of surprise from the audience.

“It’s important that the history of each historical heritage site is reflected in the content of the media art events,” said Lee Chang-keun, director of the cultural technology institute Heritage LAB. Lee organized the events for Suwon Hwaseong Fortress in 2021 and 2022 and Mireuksa in 2022.

Just like how the Hwaseong Fortress event was themed after King Jeongjo, the Mireuksa show presented Korea’s oldest folk song “Seodongyo” and the tale that it tells, about King Mu of the Baekje Dynasty (18 B.C. to A.D. 660).

The Mireuksa Temple in Iksan, North Jeolla, showcased a lightshow using drones in 2022. [HERITAGE LAB]

The CHA makes sure that each venue has a specific historical theme that will provide meaningful content, raising awareness of cultural heritages while creatively boosting their value as tourist attractions.

“The fact that a digital vision has been added to cultural assets hundreds of years old means that we found a new source of interest that fits well with the present time,” Prof. Koh said. “It fits well with the taste of the younger generation, who want to see things that are ‘Instagrammable.’ With these efforts, we can anticipate that heritage media art will continue to flourish.”

BY KANG HYE-RAN [kjdculture@joongang.co.kr]