Neighborhood Artist Doing His Thing

An artist called Yu Beok (유벅) spent a day setting up a screen and his projection equipment. It was a gorgeous say and the location seemed picture perfect, except for the technical difficulties that seemed to be visibly frustrating the artist. 

I have no idea how he set up the bottom half of the screen, but the fact that such a large screen was set up in a very public area, it was already quite attention grabbing. The projector, computer and motor/battery equipment were carefully placed on top of a table, and the table itself was half submerged into the stream. The artist was trying to perfect the way the video was being projected on the screen which required multiple repositioning of the table. Every time the table with the electronic equipment were being moved around my initial thought at that time was 'please don't drop it into the water'. It was tough to watch because there were so many instances where the equipment seemed sure to fall into the water to meet its fate, and decisively ending the whole project. 

All this seemed like a battle that the artist was willing to fight for and it was for the sake of the artist vision to be revealed and shared to those he wants to connect with. It was a difficult process especially for an artist who was past the age of 60 and he was trying to fight to get his creativity turned into a reality. Even after all the hardship and a projection that was only kept up for a hour, he had passerby's criticizing him about his artwork. One passerby said he was 'seriously disappointed,' because the video was just a projection of a water fall, and he said that an artist should try and fit into the modern age and culture by projecting a movie. The artist took it very well and didn't say much in response, but I could only image how immensely frustrating it would have been for him to have gone through so much effort only to be heavily criticized by a random passerby who believed he knew more about art than the artist himself.  

I had learned quite a lot from this experience today. One was to never limit yourself and to just go out there and do it. Another thing that I learned was that no matter how hard you work someone will always criticize you for your efforts. Knowing about this only makes me want to toughen myself and work harder to rise above the critics and truly connect with people who care about the advancement of culture.