Reaching for the light

YOUR CHANCE ENCOUNTER

Your Chance Encounter

Currents New Media Festival is an international affair, bringing some of the most innovative projects in the electronic arts from all over the world to Santa Fe. At its heart, however, it has always been a homegrown festival, and 2018 marks the first time that Currents has foreign sponsorship for one of its special exhibits. Your Chance Encounter, guest-curated by Chung-chi Wang of Idolon Studio in Berlin, presents works by three artists on the forefront of new media in Taiwan: Tao Ya-lun, Fujui Wang, and Ding Chien-chung. The exhibit began as a proposal to the Taiwan Academy of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (the Republic of China’s diplomatic facility in Houston), which approached Wang about doing an art- and culture-based project in the American West in order to promote Taiwanese artists. Wang and the three artists give a talk titled “Towards Participation in Media Art” at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe at 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 9.

Funded by the Taiwan Academy and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of China, which promotes cultural and creative industries in Taiwan, Your Chance Encounter is the first of what Wang hopes will be a continued series of collaborations with Currents. “Your Chance Encounter is on the perception of time,” she said. “At the same time, we keep thinking a lot about the future — with a technical approach — and bringing the future closer. The artists use their medium in very different ways to ask questions about how their instruments present time, space, and culture; the very essence of the medium; and the role of presentation and representation.”

Ya-Lun’s video installation Time Panorama leads the viewer through a dark industrial landscape, a dreary and uninhabited place of gray interiors that appears to have fallen into disuse. At the far end is a portal and a gleaming white light. The viewer slowly navigates the cold interior, reaching for the light. The artists’ interest is in how technology distances us physically from meaningful experiences with ourselves and others. The work seems to be about reemergence, with the idea of coming into the light as a metaphor for the reawakening of consciousness. Fujui Wang’s work Hollow Noise is a sound installation that uses multiple hypersonic speakers to focus beams of sound, experienced audibly as wind coming from several directions. As visitors move through the immersive installation, they become aware of a kinetic quality to the sounds, which Wang likens to laser light refracting between mirrors. “The artist purposely creates the multiple refractions of audio beams in the space, through our listening experience, in order to create a new sounding space,” she said.

Fragment, a kinetic sculptural installation by Chien-Chung, is composed of several liquid crystal panels, framed in wood, that change from opaque to transparent, adjusted by electronic controls. The panels are all isosceles triangles whose variations in the liquid crystal interiors suggest the clouding of memory, as well as our inability to retain memories with clarity over time.

“I have always included Tao Ya-lun and Fujui Wang’s work in my list,” said Chung-chi Wang, who works with artists involved in science- and technologybased art projects, as well as research-based projects, and other art forms at Idolon. Currents represents the first time she has worked with Chien-Chung. Chung-chi Wang is interested in work that’s immersive and interactive, which brings the viewer into a more direct, sensate experience. “For the artist, it was important to create this atmosphere,” she said. “This is the objective: the connection between the viewer and the artist, which can’t be articulated. Generally speaking, it’s pushing the boundaries of understanding and perception.”

Left, Fujui Wang: Hollow Noise, 2011, interactive new media installation; top, Tao Ya-Lun: Time Panorama, 2016, virtual reality environment

“This is the objective: the connection between the viewer and the artist, which can’t be articulated. It’s pushing the boundaries of understanding and perception.” — artist Chung-Chi Wang