Heather (Hyerin) Im

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Space Roastery 3023: Seoul Cafe Show



The Seoul Café Show is the world’s largest platform dedicated to advancing the global coffee industry and food & beverage culture, held every November. Alongside it, the Seoul Coffee Festival extends beyond the exhibition hall into the heart of the city, offering diverse cultural experiences around coffee. Together, these events foster interaction across Seoul’s coffee industry, economy, culture, and education, contributing to the city’s recognition as Asia’s leading hub of coffee culture. 

At the 22nd Seoul Café Show, which adopted the theme “Blend New, Brand New,” I presented my exhibition “3023: Space Roastery” in the Coffee Art Gallery. The work imagines the coffee industry a thousand years into the future - asking what new varieties and cultural practices might emerge. The exhibition was showcased in the COEX Hall B lobby. 

I also joined the Coffee Talk program at the Starfield COEX Mall Library, where I shared a dialogue on the future of coffee and artificial intelligence.Date
2023

Client
Seoul Café Show



      



A thousand years from now, what kind of coffee will people drink, in what kinds of spaces, and for what purposes? ☕️






In this exhibition, I created five new speculative mutant coffee beans. To enhance realism, each bean was produced as a physical 3D model, accompanied by AI-generated images that narrated its backstory.

These fictional coffee varieties imagine how environmental and social issues (if intensified over the next thousand years) might shape the evolution of coffee. For example:
• a mutant gigantic bean discovered on Mars, developed after rising sea levels make coffee cultivation on Earth nearly impossible,
• a special bean for “Pup-puccinos”, grown specifically for dogs,
• and a hyper-caffeinated variety designed for humans addicted to extreme doses of caffeine.

Through these speculative scenarios, the exhibition explored the future of the coffee industry and its entanglement with broader ecological and social conditions, using AI as a tool to visualize what coffee might become a millennium from now.





I was honored to join as the first speaker for the Coffee Talk series at the Starfield Library. It was a meaningful opportunity to share with the audience the preparation process behind my exhibition 3023: Space Roastery at this year’s Coffee Art Gallery, as well as the ideas embedded in the work.

In this exhibition, I explored visual storytelling with AI to reflect on themes of sustainability, our desires surrounding coffee, and narratives of coffee beans that transcend the limits of imagination. 




Press:
https://sprudge.com/inside-the-incredible-coffee-alley-at-seoul-international-cafeshow-222619.html
https://www.sommeliertimes.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=125876
https://kr.aving.net/news/articleView.html?idxno=1785488 
https://dailycoffeenews.com/2023/11/01/thousands-of-coffee-professionals-heading-to-cafe-show-seoul-2023/