Mr. Lee Experiment is an interactive installation that allows the viewer to move human experimental subjects between different environments that can then be observed. In this work, humans have been reduced to the same status as other species, that of experimental subjects.

I already heard about Japan Media Arts Festival, which is one of the biggest media arts festivals in Asia, and decided to apply to the festival this year. When I heard that I had got an Excellence Prize, it was a great honor and pleasure. The main difference between Japan Media Arts Festival and other Festivals like SIGGRAPH is that Japan Media Arts Festival has its own style, like Zen design. The staff members are very kind and, also very sensitive to accuracy and even minor details for exhibits. And I love their kind care and contributions. The audience loves to see and interact with my work, but some of them are not familiar with computers and other devices, which are sensitive to aggressive reactions. However, it was a wonderful time and a great experience in general.

The first thing that struck me when I encountered this work that was submitted to the Interactive Art Section of Art Division, was that I could absorb the work’s experimental subject, i.e., a human being, place him into a dropper, and drop him anywhere I like. The point of using a dropper is that it is a tool that anyone can use, and is, therefore, familiar with. Anyone who experiences this work soon starts to relate himself with the experimental subject, and feels that he, too, might be absorbed and dropped somewhere, just as he does with the experimental subject in this work. Here, the presence of the human being is too weak to resist the liquid moving through the dropper. When I empathize with the experimental subject whom I see in the liquid, it becomes hard for me to breathe, and I feel pain. The effect creates a feeling in the viewer of going back and forth between two different aspects of human life—arrogance and weakness—by simply using the dropper. The work is a superb achievement on the part of the creators that it makes everyone want to try the experiment before they start to think logically about it.