# Two Halves, One Moon — Where a Half Shaped by Hand Meets a Half Filled by AI

- SVAIFF KOREA 2026 invites Icheon Master Potter Rae-heon Park and media artist Young-hoon Jeong as special invited artists
- The theme: the moon, humanity’s first screen and first idol, and the moon jar, shaped in two halves and joined by hand
- A public-interest event with free entry and admission, supported by Co-Chair JI LIN, who shares its vision

AI is spreading fast into video, music, performance and every other kind of cultural content. A few lines of text can produce a picture; a few clicks, a scene from a film. Yet the faster the tools become, the heavier one question grows: what should we show with these tools, and why? What does it take to treat AI as a tool for expressing art, culture and philosophy?

To answer that question, SVAIFF KOREA 2026 (Silicon Valley AI Film Festival Korea 2026) and the Global AI IDOL Award 2026, held together on December 17 at Gabin Art Hall in Samseong-dong, Seoul, have adopted the theme “Two Halves, One Moon.” They have also invited Icheon Master Potter Rae-heon Park (Wonjeong) and Young-hoon Jeong, one of Korea’s first-generation media artists, as special invited artists. By placing on one stage the hands that have carried tradition forward through clay and fire, and the eyes that have explored the future through screens and code, the festival invites everyone to begin thinking about how tradition and the future can meet, and what they should do together.

![Two halves of a moon jar glowing as they meet — the festival theme “Two Halves, One Moon” (SVAIFF Korea Organizing Committee · AI-generated image)](images/01_two_halves.jpg)

## 1. The Moon, Humanity’s First Screen

The theme begins with the moon.

Long ago, people looking up at the bright moon in the night sky drew a rabbit and a cinnamon tree into it. Some saw a rabbit pounding rice; others saw a face they missed. The moon itself said nothing, yet people projected their own imaginings onto its round face. Seen this way, the moon may have been the first screen humanity looked at together.

![People gathered around a fire, looking up at the same moon — humanity’s first screen (SVAIFF Korea Organizing Committee · AI-generated image)](images/02_first_screen.jpg)

From nights spent around a fire, looking up at the same moon and sharing stories, to paintings on cave walls, shadow plays before a lamp, the cinema screen and the living-room television, the screen has kept changing. And now AI, the biggest turning point of all, stands before us.

![Moon → cave painting → shadow play → cinema → television → AI: the long history of the screen (SVAIFF Korea Organizing Committee · AI-generated image)](images/04_flow.jpg)

## 2. The Moon, Humanity’s First Idol

The moon was also humanity’s first idol, in the original sense of the word: something everyone looked up to together. On the first full moon of the lunar year, people made wishes to the same moon; beneath the full moon of the autumn harvest festival, they joined hands and danced the circle dance ganggangsullae, praying for a good harvest and happy families. People living far apart shared the same feelings while looking at the same moon.

![People dancing hand in hand beneath the moon — humanity’s first idol (SVAIFF Korea Organizing Committee · AI-generated image)](images/03_first_idol.jpg)

This is also why the Global AI IDOL Award 2026 stands alongside the film festival on the same day. A new idol born with AI is, in the end, a new way of picturing something people look at together and gather their hearts around. The festival takes those old stories of wishing upon the moon and praying for happiness, and links them to the moon jar, a traditional Korean art form.

## 3. The Moon Jar, Shaped in Two Halves and Joined by Hand

The moon jar is a Joseon-dynasty white porcelain jar that resembles, as its name says, the full moon. But this round jar holds a little-known secret: because of its size and the structural demands of its shape, it cannot be thrown on the wheel in a single piece.

![The master’s hands working clay at the wheel (Courtesy of the artist)](images/05_hands.jpg)

The potter first throws the upper half and the lower half separately. Then, when they have dried to the right firmness, the two halves are joined by hand. At that moment, which the turning of the wheel alone can never complete, smoothing the seam and correcting the curve is the work of the hands alone. That is why a moon jar is never a perfect circle. In its round body, leaning a little here and slightly off there, the touch of the person who joined the two halves remains intact.

![Two moon jars by Master Potter Rae-heon Park (Wonjeong) (Courtesy of the artist)](images/06_moon_pair.jpg)

This process resembles today, when a culture once made by hand meets AI and continues into something new. One half is the human hand; the other is AI. Neither half alone makes a round moon. A new moon rises at the seam where the two halves meet. That is why the organizers chose the moon and the moon jar as the theme, and it is the question the festival puts to every creator: holding AI as one half, what will you put into the other?

![A white porcelain moon jar by Master Potter Rae-heon Park (Courtesy of the artist)](images/07_moon_white.jpg)

## 4. The Hand of Tradition — Master Potter Rae-heon Park

![Master Potter Rae-heon Park (Wonjeong Pottery Studio, October 2026) (Courtesy of the artist)](images/08_park_portrait.jpg)

Master Potter Rae-heon Park (Wonjeong) received the Presidential Award at the Korea Traditional Crafts Exhibition in 1996 and was designated an Icheon Master Potter in 2016. Icheon, a UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Art, grants the title of Master Potter only to a small number of artisans with decades of experience. He has presented work at Collect, the London crafts fair, for five consecutive years, introducing the beauty of Korean ceramics abroad.

![The Icheon Master Potter plaque at the entrance to Wonjeong Pottery Studio (Courtesy of the artist)](images/09_sign.jpg)

Trained as a painter, he is known for painting and carving directly onto large jars. Hands that work clay and fire pick up a brush and draw stories onto the round screen of a jar. His work, which lays his own images over traditional forms, shows that an old vessel can itself become a screen.

![Jars in the Wonjeong Pottery Studio workshop (Courtesy of the artist)](images/10_studio_jars.jpg)

![Patterns painted and carved directly onto a jar (Courtesy of the artist)](images/11_park_wave.jpg)

![Installation view of the Kiaf SEOUL special exhibition “Buncheong” (2022) (Courtesy of the artist)](images/12_kiaf.jpg)

![Master Potter Rae-heon Park painting a moon jar — a scene staged with AI (SVAIFF Korea Organizing Committee · scene staged with AI (with the artist’s consent))](images/13_master_moonjar.jpg)

## 5. The Eye of the Future — Media Artist Young-hoon Jeong

![Media artist Young-hoon Jeong (Courtesy of the artist)](images/14_jeong_portrait.jpg)

Young-hoon Jeong studied sculpture at Hongik University and has combined technology and art for more than 30 years as one of Korea’s first-generation media artists and a media sculptor. An artist who has carried forward the current of Korean media art after Nam June Paik, he has shown work at the Gwangju Biennale (2000), Media City Seoul (2002), Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria (2008), the Seoul International Media Art Biennale (2008) and Art Monaco at the Grimaldi Forum (2013). His interactive series “The Partial Space,” in which viewers face off against a virtual tiger, appears in a Korean high-school art textbook.

![Still from “The Partial Space – TIGON” (Courtesy of the artist)](images/20_tigon.jpg)

![Still from “Anonymous Epic” (2008) (Courtesy of the artist)](images/19_epic.jpg)

### “Swallowed Sculpture”: Art at a Turning Point

The work to watch most closely at this year’s festival is the 3D media sculpture video “Swallowed Sculpture.” On screen, the face and muscles of a classical sculpture are swallowed into an unfamiliar organic structure and then emerge again. The sight of a form that began in a sculptor’s hands being drawn into a digital structure asks, vividly, what art must keep and what it must newly gain at the turning point where the art of the hand and digital culture interlock.

![Still from “Swallowed Sculpture” — a 3D media sculpture (Courtesy of the artist)](images/15_swallowed.jpg)

In the catalogue of his 2022 solo exhibition, “from NFT ART to MATTER,” the artist asked where art should go in an age that moves back and forth across the boundary between the virtual and the real. He spoke of a turn: starting from the process of carrying work into the digital (digitalizing), and then turning over, back toward materiality, art’s own singular presence. “Swallowed Sculpture,” in which form is swallowed into the digital and rises again as shape, shows that very moment of turning before our eyes.

![Catalogue of Young-hoon Jeong’s solo exhibition “from NFT ART to MATTER” (Courtesy of the artist)](images/16_brochure.jpg)

### From the Digital Back to Clay: “Meditation ART · Protection Bodhisattva”

His recent work “Meditation ART · Protection Bodhisattva” pushes this idea a step further. A digital bodhisattva that began with the smile of the Pensive Bodhisattva scatters into lines and light and gathers again. The artist fired this digital image onto porcelain plates in ceramic colors, returning a form born in the digital to the lasting materiality of clay. The work was shown at the 2024 World Art Expo (COEX).

![“Meditation ART · Protection Bodhisattva” — a digital bodhisattva that began with the smile of the Pensive Bodhisattva (Courtesy of the artist)](images/17_meditation.jpg)

![“Protection Bodhisattva” — a digital bodhisattva fired onto porcelain (Courtesy of the artist)](images/18_hoshin.jpg)

A master who shapes the moon from clay, and a media artist who fires the digital back into clay. It is no accident that these two stand on the same stage. One starts from the hand and meets the screen; the other starts from the screen and returns to the materiality of the hand. Two halves, facing each other.

![Young-hoon Jeong — a scene staged with AI (SVAIFF Korea Organizing Committee · scene staged with AI (with the artist’s consent))](images/21_jeong_ai.jpg)

## 6. A Question for Every Entrant

Both artists will speak at the Part 1 conference on the festival day, sharing their views on art. Whatever an entrant makes, the aim is to offer a moment to consider what a creator should hold on to between tradition and technology. Young-hoon Jeong’s video works will be screened in full at the awards venue on the festival day.

The question also connects to how the festival judges. This year the festival judges the creative process (25 points) along with the finished work (75 points). It looks not at the result AI produced, but at the intent and struggle, the failure and revision, and the role of the person who drew that result out. In other words, it evaluates the human half of the two halves.

## 7. A Gift for the Next Generation: Miniature Moon Jars

For the young creators working so hard, some of the winners will also receive miniature moon jars made by Master Potter Rae-heon Park himself. It is like handing a moon, shaped in two halves and joined by hand, to creators writing new stories with AI. The sponsorship comes from Master Potter Rae-heon Park of Wonjeong Pottery Studio and artist Young-hoon Jeong.

## 8. Support from Someone Who Shares the Vision

Sharing this vision, Co-Chair JI LIN has also stepped forward as a sponsor of the event. His support has added strength to the festival’s aim of nurturing cultural content and widening the ground on which future industries can grow.

Thanks to that support, SVAIFF KOREA 2026 is held as a public-interest event with no entry fees, no paid seating and no merchandise sales. Both entry and admission are free; seats go first to invited guests, and the rest are offered through free advance registration. The organizers even pay the evaluation fee for the Silicon Valley Global Final (USD 99 per work) for the 19 prize-winning works, so creators can focus on their work without worrying about cost.

![A moon jar with a golden seam — the seam is our stage (SVAIFF Korea Organizing Committee · AI-generated image)](images/22_moonjar.jpg)

## 9. The Seam Is the Stage

Whatever world comes, it is people who set the course of art. Even if technology beyond artificial intelligence arrives, the direction art takes must be found not by machines but within people’s own deep thinking. “Two Halves, One Moon” is a theme that carries that commitment. The seam where the human hand meets AI — that is the stage of SVAIFF KOREA 2026.

Total prize money is KRW 30 million, with a KRW 10 million Grand Prix, and the 50 winning works from the Korean edition advance to the Silicon Valley Global Final in January 2027, opening onto the international stage (the final evaluation fee for the 19 prize-winning works is covered by the organizers; the 31 Global Final Encouragement Award works enter at their own expense). The Global AI IDOL Award 2026, held the same day as a pre-showcase ahead of its full launch in 2027, gives one Best AI Idol a prize of KRW 3.5 million. Entries are accepted from October 25 to November 25 on the official website (korea.svaiff.com).

## At a Glance

| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Event | SVAIFF KOREA 2026 · Global AI IDOL Award 2026 |
| Theme | Two Halves, One Moon |
| Special invited artists | Master Potter Rae-heon Park (Icheon Master Potter) · media artist Young-hoon Jeong |
| Date and time | Thursday, December 17, 2026, 13:30–19:30 |
| Venue | Gabin Art Hall, Samseong-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul |
| Fees | None — free entry and admission (public-interest event) |
| Entry period | October 25 – November 25, 2026 |
| Hosts | E-Park AI Co., Ltd., Korea AI Marketing Institute |
| Co-organizers | SVAIFF Korea Organizing Committee, MBIG Co., Ltd. |
| Sponsors | Master Potter Rae-heon Park (Wonjeong Pottery Studio), artist Young-hoon Jeong |
| Official website | korea.svaiff.com |
| Media contact | SVAIFF KOREA 2026 Secretariat · help@svaiffkorea.com |

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