The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Minister PARK Bo Gyoon, MCST) and the Korea Creative Content Agency (President JO Hyun-rae, KOCCA) will unveil the new series of Age of Light (Gwanghwa Sidae), including two pieces of Gwanghwa Byeokhwa (Mural) and five pieces of Gwanghwa Won (Media Art garden) on August 5 (Fri). Gwanghwa Sidae was designed to show various immersive contents that combine attractive cultural resources with realistic technology around the Gwanghwamun area (Seoul) and provide new experiences to people.

MCST and KOCCA realized attractive cultural resources of the past, present, and future into augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), and three-dimensional (3D) media art and installed and displayed around Gwanghwamun area. Gwanghwa Sidae was planned to exhibit and provide a large-scale cultural experience space to the public. Since its first opening in February, more than seventy thousand visitors enjoyed and experienced the series of diverse immersive contents.

Gwanghwa Byeokhwa (Mural) is an extra-large media canvas located on the exterior wall of the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, and it is the core spot of the Gwanghwa Sidae. It has presented various forms of media arts realizing 3D stereoscopic images with a unique steel angle (ㄱ) shaped screen and created optical illusions. The newly revealed episode includes: TIGER, which depicts a tiger dynamically walking through the forest at dawn, and LIGHTNING, which realistically expresses natural phenomena of lightning and clouds with a 3D  technique.

Visitors will also see Nostalgia, which won the grand prize at the Media Art Contest for Gwanghwa Byeokhwa (Mural). This contest was open for everyone to participate to lay the foundation for creating new technology convergence and to increase interest in immersive content. A total of 52 works were received and 9 award-winning works were selected through expert review. Nostalgia is a rhythmic media art that re-interprets the roller skating rink of memories in a modern way.

Gwanghwa Won, located in the Metro Museum of Art at Gyeongbokgung Station, is an exhibition space for media art in the city. Visitors can experience works through sight, sound, and sense of touch and the place is expected to provide visitors with a short rest during their busy daily life. For this series of opening, five new contents including three for the interior exhibition hall and two for the exterior corridor will be released.

In the interior exhibition hall, visitors will enjoy “Tomorrow of Yesterday”, including FOREST, where people can feel the vitality of nature and the energy of change in the sacred forest, WATER GARDEN, an interactive content that makes flowers bloom with the hands of viewers in the water garden, and seven cultural properties such as Cheomseongdae (astronomical observatory in Gyeongju), and the 9-story wooden tower of Hwangnyongsa (Temple) scanned in 3D. In the outer corridor, two rhythmic contents of IMAGINARY OCEAN, in which marine creatures float in the sea in the form of balloons, and GEMSTONE, expressing the texture of jewels in kinetic art[1], are to catch the attention of citizens.