Overview
Pen to Page is an interactive media art installation developed as a capstone graduation exhibition at Chung-Ang University. Visitors receive a hand-drawn bird outline and color it themselves — once placed under a camera, the drawing is scanned and the bird appears on screen, coming alive and beginning to fly.
The piece is rooted in the Korean folktale Gyeonwoo and Jiknyeo — two lovers separated by the Milky Way, reunited only once a year when magpies form a bridge between them. As more visitors participate and ten or more birds gather on screen, a bridge of magpies forms and the two figures finally meet — an animation that plays only through collective action.
Process
The installation was built using Unity and computer vision, with a real-time pipeline that detects and maps each visitor's coloring onto an animated bird character. The sound environment — fluttering wings, ambient traditional Korean music — was designed to reinforce the traditional Korean atmosphere of the space.
Art direction shaped every layer of the experience: the illustration system for the bird templates, the color palette and spatial design of the exhibition hall, the pacing of the narrative reveal, and the visual language connecting each individual drawing to the larger collective story on screen.
Role
Overall art direction and partial development — responsible for the visual concept, exhibition space design, illustration system, and contributing to the Unity and computer vision implementation that brought each visitor's drawing to life.