LIMINAL RING

Liminal Ring: Order and Chaos in Systemic Art 

Liminal Ring seeks to visualize a paradox that has accompanied human thought since its beginnings: the desire to impose order on what refuses to be fully contained. 

A Suspended Encounter Between Control and Complexity 

With Liminal Ring, artist and designer Jin Lee (based in Berlin) stages a fundamental tension: between what humans can organize and what remains irreducibly complex and unstable. The work introduces laminar airflows into an otherwise turbulent environment, not to simulate nature, but to create a sustained, uneasy encounter between human systems and organic forces. 

The visible form of the installation — a ring-shaped airflow — functions simultaneously as metaphor and event. The ring gestures toward circulation and continuity, yet the circulation remains incomplete: a fragile loop that alludes to wholeness but dissolves at its edges. This incompleteness is not a failure; it is the core conceptual proposition of the work. The installation invites viewers to perceive the tension between control and surrender, recognizing uncertainty not as a flaw to correct, but as a fundamental condition of existence. 

Technology as a Lens for Reflection 

The technical apparatus of Liminal Ring is not merely an engineering feat, but a central part of the aesthetic experience. At its core is a system of 384 custom micro-fans, arranged in sixteen units of twenty-four, each controlled via bespoke circuitry and sequencing logic. These fans, paired with slit structures and flaps exploiting the Coandă effect, generate laminar jets that, when visualized with fog, become legible while remaining vulnerable to ambient turbulence. 

Parameters such as slit angle, thickness, and flap extension are not optimized for total control but for creating perceptible points of contact between engineered flow and chaotic surroundings. This fragility — jets that fragment, fold, or break — is precisely what renders the work poetic and legible. 

Site-Specificity and the Variability of Experience 

Practically, Liminal Ring is highly sensitive to context: venue volume, ventilation, and even audience movement influence its behavior. Each presentation requires on-site calibration, making unpredictability not a challenge to overcome, but a condition through which conceptual and aesthetic questions emerge.

Questions the Work Poses 

Liminal Ring does not claim to replace natural cycles or offer technological mastery as a solution. Instead, it stages a persistent question: how should we relate to phenomena and entities we cannot fully control or comprehend? By making the partiality of intervention visible, the work encourages a shift from dominance toward reflection, positioning technology as a mediator for encounters with the unknown rather than a tool to overwrite it. In this sense, the piece functions less as critique and more as invitation — to witness, to feel, and to reconsider human intention within the larger, unfolding rhythms of the world.

About Jin Lee 

Jin Lee is a new media artist and designer whose work uses computational systems and circuitry as creative media. Drawing inspiration from everyday life, Lee transforms technological components into poetic environments that explore patterns of order and chaos. Their work has been presented internationally, supported by institutions such as the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture and the ZER01NE Creative Grant.