The Backpack of Wings: Modern Mythology
Hyeseon Jeong and Seongmin Yuk
The Backpack of Wings: Modern Mythology represents speculative future scenarios, which are collisions and integrations between a bio-geotracking technology for wild animals in scientific fields and an animism in seismic disaster myths in East Asia.
Since ancient times, whenever a natural disaster strikes, people anecdotally report that “animals knew it beforehand”, a belief related to animals as spiritual beings. As telemetry systems evolve, this animistic belief is solidified and transformed into data by calculating, analysing, and biologging the animal body. This animal behavior data should make it possible to forecast such natural events in the near future. In the distant future, the evolving telemetry system could enable the creation of a new network (an Internet of Animals), in which non-humans and humans are interconnected. This new technology presents us with a ground-breaking means of facing the climate emergency. The transformation could also allow us to redefine the relationship between human beings and animals. Yet it simultaneously provokes a lot of questions: How far is the intervention of human beings into non-human life acceptable? Will animals be perceived as essential members of human society? Will they be revered as divine agents for predicting the future, or simply as measuring tools? And above all, could this technology be a genuine solution for the opaque future or is it just another anthropocentric techno-fixational illusion?
The Backpack of Wings looks into the innovative telemetry system and seeks a new relationship with non-human beings by focusing on the animistic aspect of ethological study. The project depicts an imminent scenario with the film The Backpack of Wings: Modern Mythology, and the vision of a distant future with the installation The Backpack of Wings: Post Mythology. The workshop The Backpack of Wings: Sensory Networks puts the lens on one migratory bird by using GPS data and invites the participants to create an imaginary storytelling narrative.
The third part of the exhibition “Driving the Human – Seven Prototypes for Eco-Social Renewal” with the topic “Speculative Ecosytems and Interspecies Collaborations”, is presented at ZKM | Karlsruhe from October 7 to November 26, 2023.
Listen to the form Design Podcast’s latest series, Driving the Human x form Design Podcast. In six episodes, participants from the Driving the Human initiative discuss the intersection of design and science.
We are excited to share four videos looking back at the Driving the Human festival, one for each day and an overall recap.
In 2022, the Driving the Human initiative met its ultimate goal of materializing the Seven Prototypes for Eco-social Renewal.
From November 25–27, 2022, Driving the Human: 7 Prototypes for Eco-social Renewal brought to Berlin a variety of formats exploring new ways of envisioning and inhabiting the world.
From November 25-27, 2022, Driving the Human hosts a three-day festival in Berlin marking the culmination of three years of collaboration, research and experimentation connecting disciplines between sciences and the arts.
At Temporary Gallery in Cologne, Hyeseon Jeong and Seongmin Yuk showed their sci-fi movie The Backpack of Wings and hosted a workshop format narrating the migration route of a white stork, aiming to create relations with non-human agents.
Hyeseon Jeong and Seongmin Yuk speculate on the possible implications of bird tracking technologies, from examining the data of migratory routes through an apocalyptic sci-fi lens, towards an allegorical mapping of the bird worlds they follow.
Following our Berlin festival presenting 21 visions for eco-social renewal, the Driving the Human jury had the difficult task to select seven projects to be developed as prototypes throughout 2022.
The three days of exchange and connection in Berlin could be followed along an accompanying livestream. The broadcast of day 1 is now available to be revisited here and on our Vimeo channel.
We talk to Hyeseon Jeong, who with The Backpack of Wings: Modern Mythology project explores speculative future scenarios of collisions and integrations between a bio-geo tracking technology for wild animals in scientific fields, and an animism in seismic disaster myth in East Asia.
From October 15 – 17, 2021, Driving the Human presents 21 concepts proposing new visions for sustainable cohabitation on our planet.
We are thrilled to announce the 21 concepts chosen as a result of a successful Open Call.
Hyeseon Jeong is interested in social phenomena of digitali- zation, new power/network structures, and decentralisation. Her work engages with a wide range of themes, from scientific approaches to political issues. She has generated non-linear narratives by translating and reconstructing the research content from various fields, in a maximization of fictions, radioplay, videos and sounds, entangled under a theme, and then exhib- ited as part of exhibitions, festivals and sound performances. She is currently studying at Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
Seongmin Yuk is an artist, interested in notions of de(re) constructing boundaries, space and physical embodiment, interdependent perception, transboundary, posthumanity, and digital transhumanity. Seongmin Yuk looks for the possible nodes networking through those notions, (de)composes the intersections through his videos, performances, installations, and constructed spaces. He is currently studying at Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
Credits
Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour
Michael Quetting, Hemal Naik, Carla Avolio, Andrea Flack
3D model VFX
Nathan Schönewolf
Installation assistant
Blanca Barbat
Music, sound mixing
Hyemin Jung
Data visualization support
University of Konstanz, Department of Computer and Information Science
Project TEAMwISE
Ying Zhang, Stefan Erk, Prof. Dr. Falk Schreiber
Imaging Barn
Alex Chan, Mathias Guenther
Web design & development
Egozen Collective
Soundscape composition
Jiyun Park
Acknowledgments
Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, Ute Hörner, Thomas Hawranke, Leo Beaudoin, Atelier Xoda, Urbanos, Marc Lee, Temporary Gallery, Nordic House, Christelle the Cat
