CASTING
Casting is a site-specific projection installation developed during Yiyun Kang’s residency at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It begins with the Cast Courts themselves: rooms built around plaster reproductions of architectural fragments, monuments, and sculptures that hold layered histories of copying, preservation, and cultural transmission. Their already surreal atmosphere becomes the work’s point of departure. Rather than overlooking the casts’ status as copies, Casting focuses on it: what happens when a collection of reproductions encounters digital projection, another inherently reproducible medium? The work proposes that this encounter can generate a new and temporary form of originality.
Digital projections travel across columns, figures, mouldings, and walls, wrapping the pale casts in moving image, shadow, and ephemeral light. This projected membrane does not add physical objects to the room; instead, it changes the perception of what is already there. As images appear and disappear, the solid casts shift between object, image, fragment, and architecture. Historical forms and virtual light enter a temporary symbiosis, creating a spatiotemporal environment in which the collection is continuously recast.
Casting does not seek to replace the past with digital spectacle. It asks how reproduction might become a site of creation rather than repetition. How might technology help viewers return to historical objects not as settled images, but as living questions of originality, memory, and cultural transmission?
Casting is a site-specific installation created by V&A Samsung Korean Digital Art Resident Yiyun Kang as part of her six month residency at the Museum. On 12 February and 18 March, Kang wrapped the architectural casts in the Cast Courts with digital projections, thus inviting visitors to experience this iconic space in an entirely new way.
Cast Courts, Gallery room 46A,
Victoria andAlbertMusuem
London, UK. 2016.
Acquired by V&A in 2018
Sponsored by
Short film on CASTING
produced by V&A, supported by Samsung
Kang’s interest in the Cast Courts stems precisely from the fact that the objects in this collection are copies rather than originals. The copy versus original ontology is particularly relevant for Kang because the notion of originality does not strictly exist in the digital realm. However, projection mapping is a medium that challenges this ontology in so far as-despite its digital nature-it exists only when incorporated into a physical environment.
Slide show, Photo © Yiyun Kang
In the artist’s words:
‘The atmosphere in the Cast Courts is already somewhat surreal. I have attempted to build on this atmosphere without producing physical objects. The layer of ephemeral lights creates a spatiotemporal experience in which the real casts meet the virtual in a unique symbiosis’.
Kang wanted digital projection mapped onto the casts would provide a virtual portal that invites the audience to another dimension; mixed reality environment. This membrane of artificial light transformed the existing casts in a perceptually different way. In so doing, this installation would offer a thought-provoking experience to the audience.
Slide show, Photo © Yiyun Kang
Slide show, Photo © Yiyun Kang
“CASTING is a projection mapping (new territory for the Museum) specifically designed for the V&A’s collections, engaging the audience by its strong immersive qualities despite using complex digital techniques and logistics”.
V&A curator Dr. Rosalie Kim, who led the acquisition process, 2016
Slide show, Photo © Yiyun Kang
CASTING MAKING PROCESS
Cast Courts, Gallery 46 A, captured from the Victoria and Albert Museum's film
First opened in 1873, the Cast Courts were built to exhibit one of the most comprehensive collections of casts of post-classical European sculpture. The gallery houses the V&A’s largest objects and is among the most popular in the Museum. The Cast Courts have often been a source of controversy during the 14o-odd years of their history, not least because of an earlier reaction against copying original works of art. Now, however, the interest of the collection as a whole has come to be fully appreciated.
Plaster Cast, Trajan’s Column; being casted at the V&A. 113 (made). 1864 (cast)
PROJECT PROPOSAL
There are two reasons for adopting the architectural casts as the object of my practice, the first of which follows from the twofold meaning of the Cast Courts. Each cast is simultaneously an object and an environment. Unlike sculpture, the architectural casts belonged at one time to a specific place. Detached from their original site, the casts are now rooted in a new context at the V&A. I was attracted to this dual identity as a contextual object-site that precisely accords with my concept.
A second reason for this undertaking is that the Cast Courts’ collections are not originals, but reproductions, prompting diverse reactions. It is interesting that, in a few cases, the original has been destroyed and the cast is a unique record of a lost work. This issue of copy versus original is significant in digital media, given that the notion of originality does not strictly exist in the digital realm, as everything can be transformed into everything else by editing binary code. However, projection mapping entails a somewhat different ontology; despite its digital nature, it exists only when incorporated with its environment, lending it a situational originality. It is also distinct from the traditional notion of aura. When the unique ontologies of projection mapping and the Cast Courts come together, the results promise to be inspiring.
My intention is to create a digital moving-image and project it onto the surface of the architectural cast. The process of execution would include in-depth research on the selected cast. In so doing, my practice will not only reinterpret the notion of reproduction but will also reinvigorate the contextual meaning of the cast by formulating it as an active environment rather than an object, through which the audience can navigate.
for more information about the Cast Courts, visit >> V&A Cast Couts site
Conceptual diagram for CASTING
Slide show, Photo © Yiyun Kang
System Setup Process
Slide show, Photo © Yiyun Kang
Slide Show, Click to enlarge the images