The Fail - Author & Letters
Author
Minseok Doo
Minseok Doo (b. 2002, Seoul, Republic of Korea) is a computational artist, system architect, and technology entrepreneur whose work intersects interactive media, real-time graphics, and decentralized computation. His artistic practice draws from training in Game Art and Virtual Reality Development at Ringling College of Art and Design and culminated in a BFA in Interactive Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Rooted in fine art, immersive media, and human–computer interaction, his creative work integrates generative systems, sensor-based environments, and computational aesthetics. Beyond his artistic and academic pursuits, Doo is an active technology founder with experience designing and deploying large-scale digital infrastructures.
Letter for Readers
I want to start with well-known remark, “It warns you straight away that I only meant for it to be private, for my family, and never once considered either your service or my reputation.”[1]
This book is neither a pure art book, an essay collection, nor a theoretical textbook; instead, it presents a deliberately chaotic form that exists somewhere in between.
It is simply an account of the failures in my life—the most significant warning I wish to record. I cannot claim to be entirely honest about everything that happened; some parts of this book may very well be written from my own hypocrisy and falsehoods.
I titled this work The Fail, which may seem presumptuous—especially given the weight the concept of “failure” carries. Many books speak of success rather than failure, yet along the timeline of one’s life, can we truly separate success from failure?
There is a saying that “failure is the mother of success,” and although invoking it here may sound cliché, tedious, or even pretentious, I cannot deny its relevance.
I do not wish to speak about my achievements—whether academic or professional—in any form. Instead, I will discuss the moments that felt like failure: why I made those choices, what happened as a result, and how I now reflect on them.
I hope you can see what I have seen in my life, and consider my experiences through your own lens.
Letter for Colleagues
Dear colleagues,
You may find portions of this book relevant to your teaching, research, or ongoing academic projects.
However, I must offer a serious and explicit caution. None of the materials contained here has undergone any formal research procedures—no institutional review board (IRB) approval, no clinical verification by licensed physicians, and no secured or standardized data collection processes typically required in academic research.
As I stated in the Letter to Readers, this work is fundamentally a primary source—deeply shaped and inevitably distorted by my own memory and emotion. It should be cited only as such. Researchers must not treat these pages as anything beyond a subjective, experiential document.
I am not a physician, nor a licensed educator for pre-K–12 instruction; even though I have taken psychology- and MAT-level coursework in the United States, my reflections remain those of an engineer attempting to think sociologically. I ask that you regard them accordingly.
Nevertheless, I hope that these thoughts—however partial or imperfect—may be of some use to those whose scholarship shapes contemporary education and health policy, and that they might, in some small way, contribute to meaningful change.
Despite the practical difficulties that surround work in the humanities, I offer my sincere admiration for your continued efforts.
Best wishes,
[1] Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays (Pandora's Box Classics, November 10, 2025)