Video Clipping: Inside Winning Experiential Projects

Inside Winning Experiential Projects (Funding to Finish) with Kitae Kim, Co-Founder at Foveate

Source: YouTube - Inside Winning Experiential Projects with Kitae Kim
Date: April 22, 2025
Channel: Futurespaces
Speaker: Kitae "Kite" Kim
Duration: 53:59

Summary

Kitae Kim shares insights from his experience at Studio Rafael Lozano-Hemmer creating large-scale interactive art installations and his current work with Foveate. The presentation covers how ambitious experiential projects are conceptualized, funded, and delivered, with a focus on three key principles: client empathy, research and profiling, and immersive alignment.

Key Points

Speaker Background

• Experiential Architect and Design Entrepreneur
• Studied art at University of Michigan, then architecture
• Worked at Studio Rafael Lozano-Hemmer for 5 years (2016-2021)
• Now co-founder of Foveate, an interactive presentation platform

Journey into Experiential Design

• Started with a cold email about Brexit to Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
• Joined Rafael's studio in Montreal - described as a "mad scientist laboratory"
• Helped grow the team from 9 to 20 people over 5 years
• Worked on 100+ projects during his tenure

Principles for Selling Experiential Projects

1. Client Empathy

   • Meet clients where they are - avoid technical jargon
   • Make complex ideas easy to understand
   • Use visualization tools like VR to help clients experience concepts

2. Research and Profiling

   • Understand client's tastes, desires, and values
   • Target projects to people based on their interests
   • Recognize that art is a luxury, not a necessity

3. Immersive Alignment

   • Create a "single source of truth" for all stakeholders
   • Align everyone around one vision as projects grow in scale
   • Provide visual tools everyone can understand

Featured Projects

1. Sphere Packing Bach

   • 3m sculpture with 1,128 speakers playing different Bach compositions
   • Used CAD tools and computational design to create feasible models
   • Visualized in Unreal Engine with VR demonstrations

2. Speaking Willow

   • Permanent artwork for Planet Word Museum in Washington DC
   • Metallic tree with 400 speakers playing world languages
   • Designed to match museum founder's values about learning

3. Atmospheric Memory

   • Large touring event with Manchester International Festival (2019)
   • 30+ artworks in a venue made of shipping containers
   • Required aligning 100+ people across multiple teams

Current Project: Foveate

• Interactive presentation and previsualization tool
• Combines slide deck features with spatial visualization
• Allows uploading of CAD files, 3D models, videos, PDFs, etc.
• Designed to help creatives demonstrate value and align stakeholders

Insights & Reflections

• Experiential projects require both creative vision and business understanding
• Visual communication is essential for complex, ambitious projects
• Technical skills (architecture, rendering, programming) can be combined to create unique professional value
• Understanding client values and needs is as important as creative excellence
• Remote collaboration tools are essential for creative project development

Quotes

"The greater the ambition, the more work you have to do to meet the client where they are and give them the tools to understand it intuitively."

"Creative people were the first people laid off [during the pandemic]... I felt that creative people couldn't work remotely necessarily."

"How can I help make more [experiential projects] in the world? And how can I make the experience of making the experiences better as well?"