4th Industrial Revolution (Jeonnam 1) | 2026
45.5 x 68.0 cm
archival pigment ink
4th Industrial Revolution began as an attempt to understand the profound changes taking place across the agricultural landscapes of Jeollanam-do (Jeonnam), South Korea. Across the region, state-led initiatives are accelerating the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and automated environmental control systems. Promoted as responses to rural depopulation, labor shortages, and climate instability, these technologies are transforming cultivation into an increasingly data-driven and automated process.
Rather than documenting technological progress, the series considers the environmental and social costs of this transition. The photographs depict landscapes reshaped by industrial farm structures, energy installations, automated cultivation systems, and engineered water networks. Within these transformed environments, biodiversity loss, habitat fragmentation, and intensified resource extraction emerge as unintended consequences of efforts to optimise agricultural productivity and climate resilience.
4th Industrial Revolution forms part of Defying Biotic Protocol, a long-term photographic and moving-image project examining how industrial agriculture and environmental engineering reshape rural landscapes in South Korea. The project investigates the ecological consequences of these transformations and their material imprint on the environment.
