SM Entertainment: From Stage Art to New Culture Technology

Abstract

In 2016 SM Entertainment announced NCT as their new strategy for the future built on expandability and localization. With the subunits like NCT 127, they set new trends in the aesthetics of music videos and in the music as well. NCT can be viewed as the most recent step in a long strategy for the development of new aesthetics and art forms to enrich the productions: they went from stage art towards a holistic integrative understanding of aesthetics integrating all art forms used in the creative process of production. The claim of pop art being art finds its manifestation in the opening of the SM Museum in 2018 which builds a canon of pop art forms via the exhibition of objects that range from albums, to costumes and to photographs. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 18 July 2019 Revised 9 September 2019 Accepted 19 September 2019