SMB Thank you for your time today. The Biennale held its 11th edition last year and will have the 12th edition in 2023. Prior to the inauguration of the Biennale in 2000, an exhibition entitled SEOUL in MEDIA was organized in 1996, focusing on the changing media and the city. If we consider this exhibition as a prototype for the subsequent launch of the media_city seoul, the history of the Biennale has now spanned some 25 years. Ahead of the upcoming edition in keeping with the inertia of the project, the SeMA has set about organizing and analyzing past records of the exhibition in order to establish its future direction.

You took part in the media_city seoul as a Member of Curatorial Advisory Committee in 2000 as well as in 2004 and 2006. Among the past 11 editions of the Biennale, which concentrated on direct encounters and experiments integrating art, technology and industry, the participation of a scientist like yourself must have fostered certain discussions or exchanges.

WOHN KWANGYUN (WOHN) It has actually been more than 20 years since I originally started working on the media_city seoul, so I wasn’t able to recall the specifics of my contributions to the project at first. After receiving your interview request, I managed to find some of the materials related to the Biennale that I had kept over the years. As I looked through them, I realized there were more documents than I expected. One thing that I came across is the first project plan of Biennale. I don’t think the document I have is the final version of the project plan, but perhaps a preliminary draft which dates from 1999. In the leadup to the new millennium, there was an elated, optimistic atmosphere that was felt throughout society. First of all, if we look at the circumstances in the city of Seoul at that time, vice mayor Kang Hongbin (1999 – 2002; former General Director of Seoul Museum of History, 2009 – 2016) was extremely passionate with regard to the dawn of a new century. He came from an architecture background, so he was also a major advocate of the construction of Digital Media City (DMC) in Sangam-dong. He firmly believed in the idea of bringing together art, technology and industry in one place, not just building a new city