Thesis Statement
My thesis project explores the concept of everyday volatility-subtle yet persistent fluctuations that shape daily life. I approach this topic from a personal perspective, as I am highly sensitive to changes in my surroundings and tend to quickly register differences in environments. This sensitivity became more pronounced after relocating to New York City, where I found myself increasingly drawn to patterns of variation across places, systems, and lived experiences.
A formative experience occurred during an internship at a cryptocurrency exchange firm, where I was introduced to digital assets such as NFTs and various blockchain standards. This exposure sparked an interest in algorithmic systems and in how digital artworks are generated, circulated, and valued. At the same time, it led me to question the sustainability of highly volatile digital assets, which often derive their value from speculative and extrinsic mechanisms rather than intrinsic qualities.
This reflection gradually shifted my attention away from financial volatility alone and toward volatility as it appears in everyday life. Having spent much of my adulthood in major commercial cities such as Seoul, Tokyo and New York, I became particularly aware of how the same essential goods can vary significantly in price across urban contexts. Accustomed to price stability in Tokyo, I found it striking to encounter nearly doubled costs for basic commodities in New York. These discrepancies became an entry point for thinking about volatility not only as an economic condition, but as an embodied and emotional experience.
Ultimately, my project frames everyday volatility as a lived condition shaped by perception, environment, and systems of value. While acknowledging the increasing role of decentralization and digitalization in contemporary life, I am interested in how these systems intersect with human sensitivity and interpretation.
In doing so, I aim to foreground often-overlooked dimensions of experience-namely, perception, feeling, and the ability to interpret subtle change-as essential forms of knowledge in an increasingly optimized and automated world.