LEE & BAE presents The Resolution of Landscape, a solo exhibition by WHYIXD, a New Media Art group based in Taiwan. WHYIXD redefines "resolution" not merely as a technical term for image clarity, but as a conceptual framework for how humans perceive and interpret their environment. By collecting invisible elements such as the ocean, wind, voltage, and subtle environmental signals that constitute both nature and the city, they transform these inputs into a formal language of light and movement through algorithms and programming. Their work traces the genealogy of late 20th-century Kinetic and Media Art while expanding into a contemporary discourse that integrates data-driven environmental awareness. By shifting nature from an object of representation to a "data-driven sensory structure," WHYIXD proposes a new concept of landscape for the digital age.
As a port city where marine environments, industrial structures, and complex topographies intersect, Busan serves as a specific site to manifest the "environment-technology-sensation" relationship explored by WHYIXD. In this exhibition, the artists utilize real-time environmental data from Busan to visualize the invisible currents of the city through kinetic structures that operate organically with shifting light waves and colors. The installations create a "digital ecosystem" where metallic structures, intricate wiring, and botanical forms converge. These works transcend simple interactive media, functioning as systems that embody temporality—the repetition of energy circulation, creation, and extinction. Through movements generated by mechanical devices and recycled materials, along with the reaction and refraction of light, they metaphorically reveal the state of existence constantly adapting and transforming within an urban environment.
The exhibition's highlights, the new work Alive #2: Flow of the Port (2026) and Tender Soul of Ocean (2022), sensualize the environmental characteristics of Busan in distinct ways. Produced in collaboration with floral artist Queena Wang, Alive #2: Flow of the Port originates from the landscape of Busan—where the ocean, the port, and the light reflected off glass facades intersect—visualizing the fluidity and circulatory structure of the port city through a kinetic environment of metal, delicate wiring, and botanical elements. Meanwhile, Tender Soul of Ocean processes Busan’s real-time wind data through algorithms, converting it into wave-like flows of light to evoke sensory memories of the sea and the invisible forces of nature. Installed on the first and second floors respectively, the two works allow viewers to experience the invisible rhythms of the city and nature with different densities and atmospheres.
Furthermore, Heaven Bloom - Vital Edition expands WHYIXD’s "Digital Landscape" series, exploring the relationship between natural memory and materiality. Inspired by the rhododendrons of Taiwan's high mountains, this work creates a collective form reminiscent of organic life through a structure where individual modules interlock and expand. Each unit forms an infinitely expandable structure through repetition and proliferation, moving according to programmed temporal rules and mechanical devices to simulate seasonal changes and the cycle of life. This kinetic system, operating on mathematical calculations and algorithms, allows for a sensory experience of the flow of non-material time and space.
