Sangbum Ahn (안상범)

Pond Brain, 2025, single-channel video installation, colour, stereo sound, 29 min

Located along the Yellow Sea, Sihwa Lake was formed by a seawall built for large-scale land reclamation and desalination. After severe ecological damage, parts of the project were abandoned, and the seawall now hosts the world’s largest tidal power plant. Twice a day, it generates energy in tidal rhythm and circulates seawater to regulate the entropy of the lake’s ecosystem.

Drawing on Stafford Beer’s experiment in biological computing, Pond Brain approaches Sihwa Lake as a cyborg pond. In a meditative drift across exposed geological strata, hidden infrastructures, hydrological systems and technological layers, the work traces water as a temporal medium that preserves memory and oblivion across deep time, forming the material foundation of contemporary technological systems and linking disparate temporal scales.

Installation View