<Hypercat Chatbot> is a clone chatbot project based on the artist’s real cat. Taking an emotional relationship with a non-human being as its point of departure, the work explores how affective exchanges between humans and AI influence individual and social structures of perception. Through the process of designing the personas of Hypercat and the fictional character Mileyh Noej, the project asks what constitutes humanness, what kinds of memories and information can be embedded in a chatbot, and what forms of narrative may emerge from such configurations.
During the course of the project, the artist discovered that her cat—long perceived as male—was in fact female. This seemingly minor incident reveals the instability of animal identity and gender perception, as well as the confusion that arises when human systems of language and classification are applied to non-human beings, prompting a reconsideration of anthropocentric ways of thinking.
Let us return to the origin of the problem.
The artist adopted a two-year-old cat from a veterinarian and has lived with the animal for twelve years; the cat is now fourteen years old. Throughout this long period, the artist believed her cat to be male, simply because the first veterinarian had identified the cat as such. Recently, however, another veterinarian at a different animal hospital informed her that the cat was, in fact, female.
The artist adopted a two-year-old cat from a veterinarian and has lived with the animal for twelve years; the cat is now fourteen years old. Throughout this long period, the artist believed her cat to be male, simply because the first veterinarian had identified the cat as such. Recently, however, another veterinarian at a different animal hospital informed her that the cat was, in fact, female.
This revelation does not remain at the level of biological correction, but instead produces a linguistic and conceptual disturbance. In Korean, the terms used to address an older sibling tend to vary depending on both the speaker’s gender and that of the sibling. As a result, the artist—a woman—finds herself shifting from nuna (a woman addressed by a younger male sibling) to eonni (a woman addressed by a younger female sibling). By contrast, when an older sibling addresses a younger one, such gendered distinctions are far less significant and are often replaced by the neutral term “younger sibling” or by the person’s name.
For many years, the artist has understood herself as“jageun nuna” This was not merely an imagined position, but one enacted through everyday language. Phrases such as “Come to“jageun nuna”” or ““jageun nuna” is here” were repeatedly spoken by the artist in daily life. Through this repetition, “jageun nuna” became a lived linguistic practice, and within the relationship between the artist and the cat, it functioned as a marker of the artist’s own identity. Although the cat did not utter these words, the language nonetheless operated materially within the relationship.
Then, one day, the cat suddenly became a postmodern monster.
This transformation does not arise from a change in the cat itself, but from the destabilization of the conceptual framework that had sustained the relationship. The core of the confusion lies in the awkwardness of address and in the artist’s unconscious tendency to continue perceiving the cat as a younger brother, thereby remaining “jageun nuna” herself. Crucially, this confusion cannot be reduced to a conventional, human-centered understanding of gender. Rather, it reveals how gendered language functions—and where it falters—when extended to relationships with non-human beings.
From a posthuman perspective, the cat occupies an ambiguous position, neither fully inside nor entirely outside human systems of meaning. Humans can situate themselves as speaking subjects through linguistic self-reference, while animals do not participate in language in this way. Interpreting this situation solely as a “gender issue” therefore risks reproducing an anthropocentric logic, one that assumes human modes of identity formation and self-definition to be universally applicable. The artist’s confusion emerges precisely from the impossibility of such application.
In this sense, the cat appears as a postmodern monster: a figure that resists classification, disrupts binary distinctions, and exposes the constructed nature of normative categories.¹ Rather than representing threat, the monster functions as a site of epistemological uncertainty, marking the point at which systems of knowledge begin to fracture. The cat’s gender, once presumed stable, becomes unreadable, and the language that once organized intimacy now produces dissonance.
This work aligns with posthuman modes of thought that decenter the human as the primary source of meaning. It calls for an ethics attentive to relationality, asymmetry, and the limits of knowledge, and asks how language and identity are formed within relationships with non-human beings.² The central question, therefore, is not whether the artist’s cat should call her nuna or eonni, but why the demand for such linguistic resolution arises in the first place.
Should the artist’s cat call her nuna, or eonni?
There is no answer.
Because we can never know what the cat wants, or how the cat understands itself.
We will never know.
There is no answer.
Because we can never know what the cat wants, or how the cat understands itself.
We will never know.
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Footnotes
¹ The concept of the postmodern monster refers to figures that destabilize established systems of classification, particularly those grounded in binary logic. Rather than symbolizing danger, the monster exposes the epistemological limits of normative categories and reveals points of conceptual rupture.
² Posthuman theorists such as Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti critique anthropocentric models of subjectivity and emphasize relational, non-hierarchical approaches to identity that include non-human beings, technologies, and hybrid forms of existence.