Rehearsal image from Cine-Forest: Awakening Bloom. Photo by Sun Kim
Overview
Cine Forest: Where Nature, Human and Technology Converge
Cine Forest: Awakening Bloom marks the world’s first attempt to transform the dense woodland of Bundang Central Park into a vast open-air media theatre, directed by media artist Jinjoon Lee.
At the heart of this project lies the concept of “Cine Forest”, which seeks not merely to use the forest as a scenic backdrop, but to transit it into the very stage and active agent of the performance. Through ultra-high-resolution projection mapping, the contours of the landscape and the delicate textures of leaves and trees become the living canvas for moving images. Wherever the audience turns, they find themselves fully immersed in a scene that breathes and unfolds around them.
The subtitle, “Awakening Bloom” (動花), captures the moment when projected imagery fuses with the movements and rhythms of the forest, as if each leaf were unfurling like a flower in bloom. In this transformation, the forest ceases to be a passive element of nature and instead becomes a living, sentient entity, where image, music, and the voices of citizens converge.
This performance introduces an entirely new form, the “Media Symphony”, extending beyond the boundaries of the traditional classical concert. Beloved film scores are interwoven with newly composed symphonic works created through collaboration between human composers and artificial intelligence. These pieces are performed by a 70-piece orchestra and a thousand-strong civic choir, interlaced with the natural soundscape of the forest—wind, insects, and flowing water.
Sounds gathered from the everyday lives of Seongnam’s citizens—captured in parks, stations, streets, and roads—are also woven into the composition, producing a layered narrative in which past and present, humanity and technology, city and nature intersect.
Cine Forest: Awakening Bloom is not merely a technological spectacle. It is a stage upon which art and technology merge to realise “augmented empathy”, expanding the field of shared human experience. Here, light, sound, human voices, and the breath of nature resonate together, transforming the audience from passive observers into participants within the work itself. Every act of walking, breathing, and sensing becomes part of the unfolding narrative, leaving behind a holistic and liminal experience that can never be repeated in exactly the same way.
This work represents not only a new horizon for media art, but also a symbolic declaration of how technology and art can converge to shape the cultural identity and future branding of a city.
Laser rehearsal scene of Cine Forest: Awakening Bloom, Photo by Sun Kim