Viewporter

Abstract

Viewporter is an interactive installation that displays a computer-generated video of a city. Viewers can rotate the screen attached to a device that resembles a telescope to accelerate the playback speed of the video. In this project, the deep learning technique with images capturing the Seoul skyline was used to train and generate the artificial city skyline. As one of the most developed metropolitan cities, Seoul has been under continuous development and construction of highrise buildings over the past decades. While the image of the skyscraper-packed skyline has been portrayed by the mainstream media to symbolize the utopian dream of the city, the lives of the residents with mundane duties have been far-fetched from the attractive image promoted through the propagandistic videos on the media. Viewporter uses the analogy of a telescope in tourist attractions to emphasize the distance between the idealized and the real and have viewers re-think the illusion and fantasy promoted by the images of development programs.