To you with excuses
2025
How much influence do bugs have on our lives? <To you with excuses> is a 3D video work and poetic exploration of the uneasy symbiosis between humans and insects. Developed from a collection of poems inspired by silverfish, the work transforms personal discomfort into a digital landscape shaped by memory, metaphor, and machinic voice. The original poems, rooted in autobiographical experience, are whispered by an AI-generated voice, creating a sonic atmosphere that oscillates between intimacy and alienation. Within the video, a virtual shelter emerges, gradually shifting the perception of bugs from unwelcome intruders to pest friends. Drawing inspiration from Korean shamanic cleansing rituals, the work asks whether digital space can serve as a site of digital exorcism. Through this multifaceted experiment in literature, art, and digital technology, <To you with excuses> not only documents an encounter with the more-than-human world but also reimagines it as a site of speculative empathy. It gestures toward an expanded poetics where fear, memory, and technology entangle to propose new modes of sharing space with others—both organic and artificial.
AI Context
<To you with excuses> integrates artificial intelligence as a poetic agent. The work features a whispering AI-generated voice that recites autobiographical poems. Rather than using AI for generative production, it serves as a tool for emotional modulation, intensifying the intimacy, secrecy, and alienation embedded in the original poems. This subtle use of AI reframes authorship and embodiment, inviting reflection on how machinic voices shape the poetic landscape within digital environments.
Sohyun Lee
South Korea
Bio
Sohyun Lee (b.1993 in Seoul) is a Cologne-based media and installation artist. Through poetic 3D digital and physical structures, she explores hospitality between humans and technology. She studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and Hongik University in Seoul. Her works have been shown at Weltkunstzimmer (Düsseldorf), Glasmoog (Cologne), Kunstmuseum Bonn, WRO Art Center (Wrocław), and TIC Gallery (Brno).