'AI is a new nature — designers must tend it, not conquer it,' says KAIST professor

In an age of infinite image generation, questions and discernment are the new competitive edge

G-Dragon's iris, AI and a satellite antenna: the 'data gardening' experiment

'Korea's strength is speed and execution — what it lacks is patience and accumulation'

Lee Jin-joon, professor at KAIST's Graduate School of Culture Technology. [Provided by Lee]

Lee Jin-joon, a professor at KAIST's Graduate School of Culture Technology, said AI has become "the new arithmetic and the new nature of our time," and that designers must become people who tend that new nature — not conquer it.

"If anyone can produce a high-quality image in seconds, what becomes scarce is the ability to ask 'what should we make?' and the eye to recognize 'what is good,'" he said in an interview.

"AI excels at generating answers, but questions worth asking still come from human life," he added. "We are entering an age where the person who can explain why one image out of a thousand matters is more valuable than the person who made all thousand."

'The image itself is no longer the destination'

Lee said design in the AI era must go a step beyond producing visual output. In an age when generative AI can produce images without limit, the image itself can no longer be the final destination of design.

"'Beyond Visual' means designing a total experience that lies past the visual," he said. "Sound, touch, bodily movement, the temperature of a space, the passage of time, and even the silences in between — these are all materials for design."

Lee's own career has traced a path across those boundaries. After studying business administration, he worked as a television producer and then as an executive at an architecture firm before becoming a visual artist. Drawing on that range of experience, he now focuses on what he calls "Total Experience" — designing sound, light, space, time and the body together.

"Good Morning, MR.G-Dragon," a collaborative work by Lee and singer G-Dragon. [Provided by Lee]

'In the AI age, be a gardener, not a miner'

Another keyword running through Lee's working philosophy is the garden. To describe his practice, he has developed two concepts: "Data Gardening" and "Gardenetics." The underlying idea is that technology should be tended like a garden rather than treated as something to be operated and controlled.

"A gardener does not control the plants," he said. "You prepare the soil, water it, create the conditions, and then you wait. You welcome what grows unexpectedly."

The same logic applies to data. Rather than mining data like a raw resource and extracting only what is immediately needed, he argues, one must think carefully about what data to plant and store, how to preserve it, how to retrieve it, and how to let it change over time.

"If we use AI only as a machine that produces correct answers, we become miners," Lee said. "If we work with AI as though we are growing something together, we become gardeners. What the AI age calls for is not stronger control but a better gardener's sensibility."

That thinking about the relationship between technology and humanity runs directly into his actual work. In a recent project titled "Good Morning, MR.G-Dragon," created with singer G-Dragon, Lee connected human body data, AI and outer space.

Lee took G-Dragon's iris image, augmented it with generative AI, and projected it onto a 13-meter satellite antenna. He then combined sound data from the Emille Bell and transmitted G-Dragon's voice and the song "Home Sweet Home" into actual space.

During his doctoral studies at the University of Oxford, Lee produced his dissertation, "Empty Garden," not as a bound book but as a 10-meter hanji scroll that readers had to physically unroll to read. One edition of that work was permanently acquired by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in March — the first time a work by a contemporary Korean artist had entered the museum's permanent collection.

Lee's 10-meter dissertation scroll, "Empty Garden." [Provided by Lee]

'Korea's strength is speed — what it lacks is patience'

Lee identified "speed and execution" as Korea's competitive advantage in combining AI with art and design. He also cited the country's world-class technology infrastructure and a public quick to embrace new things.

"The fact that KAIST — a science and technology institution — has appointed a fine arts doctoral graduate as a full-time professor, and that an artist and a scientist can project a work onto a satellite antenna on the same campus, does not happen easily in other countries," he said. "Korea's strength is the ability to move from 'experiment' to 'execution' in convergence."

What Korea lacks, he said, is accumulation and patience. What struck him during his time in Oxford and Tokyo was less any gap in technology itself than the depth of accumulated criticism and theory, and a culture willing to wait for experiments that yield no immediate results.

"In a garden where you ask about the harvest the moment you plant the seed, no great tree can grow," he said. "What Korea needs now is not greater speed but a system and a sensibility that allow for slowness."

boo@heraldcorp.com