COMO explores the creative potential in people by engaging them as storytellers using various media in urban environments in Seoul, Korea. Seoul is a city of big, brutally modernized, hectic, media saturated, and impersonal environments. One may feel overwhelmed being caught in this breathless pace of money, technology, and life rhythm. COMO attempts to reclaim the natural human spirit of our city by celebrating the individuals as unique storytellers and recovering a new sense of community among them. First conceived as a public art installation, COMO has a display element of indoor and outdoor LED screens attached to a SK Telecommunication building located in the heart of Seoul. In December 2004, COMO exhibited artworks by four Korean video artists, Kim Hae Min, Yuk Guen Byeong, and Hong Sung Chul, and has been expanded to an art channel showing various moving-images. Through a wide range of public art programs including COMO seasonal Exhibition, COMO will develop into a media platform which interacts with people in the city. COMO also allows viewers to interact with the display through comostory.com, the internet and mobile platform of COMO. The multiple interfaces of COMO endeavor to appropriate the city through personal stories and images, rather than information, of players in the city. In this process, not only do they share their ideas and works but also encourage others to join in creative activities, thereby spreading the “virus” of creativity. We expect that the whole system of interactive creativity should emerge naturally in that there is no central control or overarching plan that would otherwise dictate the process; instead, we rely fundamentally on the creative energy inherent in each person, and mutual trust that enables humane communication. All these COMO activities are geared toward proactive user experiences and innovative expressions of them. The focus is not simply on the final outcomes but on the behind-the-scenes human associations and the creative forces emerging out of free human communication. These players will assert, and learn to assert, their personality and imaginative power as both individuals and members of dynamic communities.
Depths of Experience 