Invisible Landscapes
(NWG41626)
2026

New Wight Gallery, UCLA


A five-channel network of autonomous robotic radio systems produced from converted kitchen items and grocery recycling. Responsive to the conditions of each site, ambient electromagnetic frequencies are channeled, mediated, and amplified through arrangements of discarded containers, packaging, and household items adapted into crude electrical circuitry. The technology comes from appropriations of early electrical patents underlying the first semiconductor systems, producing an evolving soundscape susceptible to loss, interference, and degradation. The resulting environment centers the distortion of information through a continuous process of energy conversion.

The work draws from the period around 1966 following the Brown Memorandum, a confidential diplomatic and financial agreement between the United States and South Korea which guranteed  military procurement contracts to Korean firms in exchange for the deployment of troops to Vietnam. The era marks  a pivotal shift into the  the formation of  Korea’s export-led chaebol economy


Korean semiconductor production and U.S. military procurement during the Vietnam War, which are inadequately accounted for in narratives of Korea’s postwar industrialization.