“I LOVE design, especially local manifestations
like Opinel in France, plastic bag drinks in Malaysia, Hong Kong’s bamboo scaffolding or Cyworld
in Korea.
I try to use them as a basis for some of my work, when appropriate.”
Emil Goh is on the lookout for urban phenomena, for unusual developments that are emerging regionally.
Born in Malaysia to Chinese parents, Emil Goh grew up in Sydney and later earned his Master in Fine
Arts degree in London. He loves big cities and seems to be at home all over the world. At some point,
he discovered Seoul. Fascinated by the city and the culture, Emil Goh now lives there in his “officetel“
(this is an office-hotel, a Korean type of dwelling for mixed use). Here, he pursues his photography
and design research. INMYX spoke with him about his projects.
INMYX:
You have been working on a project that is concerned with a unique form of cyber culture in Korea. What
is so unique?
Urban Korean culture interests me a lot, and since I only really
love large cities, Seoul is my main focus.
It is a very young and evolving
economy. Highly developed parts of the city were rice fields 25 years ago. The city is changing very
fast, and observing the adaptations and the process of transition are at the core of my work/research.
I guess you could say I am doing a kind of study in the manner of a documentary project.
Local
online culture is just one of the subjects that fascinate me. When I first arrived, people would mention
their pets/friends/children/activities and take me to a computer to show pictures of them to me, and
99% of the time, they would be using a website called Cyworld. This site was a revelation
for me, since my research revealed that a significant number of Koreans used it to blog, photoshare,
etc. In fact, 99% of all 20-29 year olds were using this service. It was the super-comprehensive social
networking tool that pre-dated MySpace . And it was a very important means of social communication,
credited (along with text messaging) for the decrease in the use of e-mail (Cyworld has a “guestbook”
function) in Korea. This is just the tip of the iceberg for why Cyworld is still popular today. Discussions
with locals about the site also helped me learn about aspects of Korean society that were manifested
in the use of the website. This motivated me to make a work about Cyworld, since it is the public interface
for an incredibly large number of individuals.
INMYX: Cyworld
mirrors Koreans’ social life. You can see the network of relationships that members are a part of in
their actual lives. What interesting patterns did you notice?
One of the many
things that the site indicated was that Koreans love convenience, since it is an all-in-one service
— incorporating all the functions of blogger, flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us and MySpace. They were
very comfortable with having their real life friendships maintained online. Often, after people are
introduced, Cyworld addresses are exchanged more than phone numbers were before.
INMYX:
In your work MyCy you show people in their real living rooms and also in their
virtual homes, in Minihompy. What is that?
The Minihompy
is a mini homepage with a third space, which is called a miniroom. When signing up, you get an empty
room that includes your avatar in cute white underwear. Both can be changed (free with a few options,
a large catalogue of options for cash) with the addition of furniture, backgrounds, clothes, browser
skins and more. So everyone has a “room” to begin with, which they then customize. The MyCy
project documents users and their online and offline environments. In the second part of this project,
I went about matching the two environments exactly, something never done before, using my own account
and apartment.
INMYX tip:
Have a
look for yourself http://cyworld.com/emilgoh
or find more exciting
ones, just by adding random names after the URL.
Try all your friends’ names for fun!
For instance: www.cyworld.com/<friend’s name>
Opinel, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, YouTube and del.icio.us are trademarks of their respective owners.
