This ongoing research investigates how humans perceive, interpret, and visualize encounters with unseen or spiritual realities.

Through fieldwork, interviews, and visual experimentation, the project explores the relationship between perception, memory, ritual experience, and the representation of non-ordinary phenomena.

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The artist is currently conducting interviews with Korean shamans who report spiritual experiences, with a target of 130 participants (70 completed to date).

The interviews focus on firsthand accounts of encounters with entities perceived as divine, altered states of consciousness, and sensory perceptions associated with ritual practice. These testimonies form an empirical foundation for subsequent photographic, film, AI-based visual works, and media art.

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Parallel to the interviews, the research includes visual documentation of sacred sites, as well as recordings of shamanic rituals, Buddhist ceremonies, Confucian rites, and other cultural practices related to death, remembrance, and transformation. The artist examines how invisible or subjective experiences can be translated into visual language through photography, moving images, and computational visualization methods.

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Recent research incorporates AI-based visualization experiments as a tool for perceptual reconstruction and memory translation. Rather than replacing photographic practice, these experiments aim to expand the possibilities of representing experiences that exist beyond conventional visual perception.

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Ultimately, this inquiry intersects with a more fundamental question: What does it mean to be human in the age of artificial intelligence?

The research is ongoing and will be selectively presented through future exhibitions, publications, and film projects.