Faculty of Art

Experimental Animation

Min Chung

천도재(Cheondojae):Reincarnation

Cheondojae (천도재): Reincarnation is a three-minute experimental 2D animation inspired by Korean shamanistic ritual. Rather than directly depicting a Gut ceremony, the work translates its sensory and performative qualities into an abstract visual language through movement, rhythm, and texture.The animation explores reincarnation as a cyclical process, presenting death not as an end but as part of continuous transformation. It incorporates digital drawing alongside hanji (traditional Korean paper) textures, with a colour palette derived from Obangsaek (오방색) to emphasize its cultural context.

“Cheondojae (천도재): Reincarnation explores transformation as an ongoing, cyclical condition rather than a fixed conclusion. Rooted in Korean shamanistic Gut ritual, the work does not attempt to document or reconstruct the ceremony. Instead, it translates its sensory and performative qualities, including rhythm, repetition, intensity, and duration, into an abstract visual language. The animation moves through states rather than events. It creates a space that is experienced rather than explained.In 굿 Gut(Shamanistic ritual), repetition is not redundancy but accumulation. Gestures, sounds, and movements build over time and shift in meaning as they repeat. This structure became central to my approach. Rather than constructing a linear narrative, I focus on how forms emerge, dissolve, and return in altered states. The animation does not physically loop, yet it resists closure. Beginnings and endings are destabilized through pacing. Continuity emerges not through sameness, but through transformation. Reincarnation is not illustrated as a literal cycle. It is felt through duration, rhythm, and gradual change.This work is rooted in personal experience. After my grandmother’s passing, my family held a Gut ritual to guide her spirit forward, free from lingering attachments, toward peace in her next life. I witnessed the ceremony firsthand. The sound, colour, and physical presence of the Mudang remained with me long after it ended. It was the first time I encountered ritual as something lived and embodied rather than symbolic or distant. Grief, care, and transition coexisted within the same space. This experience reshaped my understanding of ritual as an active process that operates through the body and through time. This project grows from that moment. It also reflects an attempt to reconnect with a cultural heritage I had previously experienced from a distance.Materiality plays a crucial role in this translation. The backgrounds are constructed using hanji, traditional Korean paper, then photographed and integrated into the digital animation. Hanji carries its own history through its fibers, density, and irregularities. These qualities introduce a depth and presence that cannot be replicated through purely digital means. Texture becomes more than a visual effect. It becomes a way of holding memory and making the intangible perceptible. The integration of analogue material within a digital framework reflects the conceptual tension at the core of the work. It moves between the traditional and the contemporary, the physical and the virtual, and the inherited and the reinterpreted.Colour operates as both structure and atmosphere. The palette is derived from Obangsaek (오방색), the traditional five-directional colour system in Korean culture, often present in Gut rituals. Each colour carries symbolic associations. In this work, colour is not used illustratively. It functions as an emotional and spatial force that shapes the viewer’s experience and guides movement through the animation. Gesture and colour replace dialogue and narrative. Meaning emerges through sensation rather than explicit explanation.The relationship between digital animation and material texture reflects the conceptual framework of the work. It engages thresholds between life and death, presence and absence, and memory and transformation. These are not fixed oppositions but fluid states that exist in relation to one another. The animation becomes a site where these conditions intersect and shift. Process is inseparable from meaning. The way the work is made is integral to what it expresses.My broader practice explores cultural memory, identity, and transformation through experimental animation. Having grown up between cultures, my relationship to Korean heritage has been shaped by both distance and return. This position informs my interest in translation. I approach translation not as direct conversion, but as negotiation between forms, sensations, and contexts. I am particularly drawn to how intangible experiences, such as ritual, memory, and grief, can be rearticulated through abstraction and movement.Ultimately, Cheondojae (천도재): Reincarnation does not aim to communicate a fixed message or provide a clear interpretation. Instead, it invites the viewer to remain within its temporal and sensory field. Reincarnation is approached not as an idea to be understood, but as a condition to be felt. Through rhythm, duration, and transformation, the work creates a space where meaning emerges gradually through experience.”