Cosmic Garden, 2026. Two-channel video installation, LED main display 29m × 7m (P4), LED floor display 9m × 6m (P6), 2 min. Opening performance at 2026 SBS D Forum, Seoul, Korea
Cosmic Garden, a new video and sound work by the internationally acclaimed media artist Julian Jinjoon Lee, unfolds across a large LED wall on stage.
The work begins with the most intimate terrain we carry each day: the human eye. The camera moves slowly inwards, yet this passage opens unexpectedly onto the vastness of the cosmos. As an inward gaze becomes a voyage through the universe, iris-like patterns bloom into nebulae, streams of light expand into stellar trajectories, and the innermost field of sensation opens onto a boundless panorama. Without spectacle or insistence, the work suggests that each of us contains a universe.
This is a poetic journey between the infinitely small and the infinitely vast. Biometric data drawn from the body, including iris patterns, pulse and the geometry of the eye, is interpreted and reimagined through AI, allowing this visual language to unfold into cosmic form. What begins as an inward movement gradually opens out towards the universe beyond. The inner cosmos and the outer cosmos are not separate realms. In the rhythm of light, memory and sensation, they reflect one another until their boundaries begin to dissolve.
Music composed by Lee himself and arranged from performances by an orchestra of more than seventy musicians carries the journey forwards. Through spiralling forms and the slow drift of nebulae, two universes move towards each other. In that meeting, the screen opens into a Cosmic Garden, radiant with wonder and quietly alive.
Artist Julian Jinjoon Lee
Art Director Sun Kim
Technical Director Jinju Kim
Visual Development Doyo Choi
Sound Editor Shinhyang Park
Music Fallen Titan (2025)
Composed by Julian Jinjoon Lee
Orchestration Seunghye Bae
Conducted by Dasol Lee
Performed by Korea Media Symphony