K-pop pioneer Lee Soo-man bets on 4D future

K-pop pioneer Lee Soo-man returned to the Korean music industry Monday with the simultaneous debut of a boy group and a girl group under his new company, A2O Entertainment, unveiling a vision that combines music with technology designed to change how fans experience performances.

At a launch event in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province, Lee introduced 15-member boy group A2O Soul and nine-member girl group A2O Lite, which will release their respective debut digital singles, "Superstar" and "Neon," Tuesday.

The event marked Lee's first major domestic project since his three-year noncompete agreement with Hybe expired in February. The SM Entertainment founder, who helped establish the modern K-pop production system, left the company in 2023 following a management dispute.

While the simultaneous launch of two groups was unusual, much of Lee's presentation focused on what he calls "culture technology," or CT, and how technological advances could offer audiences new ways to experience music.

"When a new technology appears, the question is how we connect it to culture, and what new content and new experiences we can create that could not exist before," Lee said.

Central to Lee's presentation was 4D Gaussian Splatting, or 4DGS, a technology that uses footage captured by multiple cameras to reconstruct moving performers in three-dimensional space.

Unlike conventional video, which limits viewers to camera angles selected during filming, the technology allows different viewpoints and camera movements to be generated afterward.

Lee traced the concept to experiments he conducted about 16 years ago, when he used arrays of still cameras to create rotating, freeze-frame effects in music videos featuring Girls' Generation, SHINee, TVXQ and BoA.

"Back then I asked myself what would happen if this could be done with video cameras," he said.

According to Lee, the music videos for A2O Soul and A2O Lite were filmed using 4DGS. He also outlined plans for an extended-reality experience involving Samsung Electronics.

He suggested the technology could eventually have applications beyond entertainment, including generating data to help artificial intelligence and robots learn from human movements.

Lee also addressed the responsibilities accompanying such advances.

"We must think not only about what technology can do, but about what we record and what we leave for the future," he said.

Following Lee's presentation, A2O Lite and A2O Soul took the stage to introduce their debut singles.

A2O Lite's "Neon" evoked the polished, contemporary sound of recent SM girl groups, while A2O Soul's "Superstar" featured melodic elements reminiscent of the label's earlier boy group releases.

The similarities were notable given Lee's history at SM, where he developed numerous influential K-pop acts. His longtime collaborator Yoo Young-jin, who spent nearly three decades at SM, has also joined him at A2O, contributing to the new groups' music and performances.

Swedish songwriter and producer Alex Karlsson, whose credits with SM artists include Super M's "Tiger Inside," NCT Dream's "Fireflies" and SHINee's "Undercover," attended the showcase and noted a mix of familiar and new musical elements.

"You can still hear some roots," Karlsson said, referring to melodies reminiscent of Lee's earlier work. "But there's a lot of new stuff in there that I don't think we've heard from SM."