Pullim: Untangling the Knots within

The Pullim system is an offline interactive installation in which a viewer writes down a single line describing a concern and, while holding physical slime balls in both hands, attempts to untangle a three-dimensional knot generated by a language model from that sentence. The tightness of the knot is derived from the model’s vectorized representation of the sentence. The work does not present healing as its primary purpose, nor does it place trust in the sense of relief that it itself produces. Confronted with a knot image generated by an algorithm whose inner workings remain inaccessible, the viewer completes the task by simultaneously manipulating the physical material in their hands and the simulation on the screen, thereby producing a sense that their concern has been indirectly resolved. The work deliberately constructs this illusion of fluency and does not conceal the process through which it is produced. What remains is the question of to whom the concern, and the labor invested in it, ultimately belonged.