CYFEST 16: Beyond Interfaces. Taiwanese Video Program

Clear Calm Free Human

6 min. 45 sec., 2021 (2024 ver.)

A series of alchemical recipes for attuning that is simultaneously mythological, medicinal, and revealing of a cosmological order. To relieve an overflow of shadows in the melancholy lungs, to re-order the emotive in stagnated waters, to keep dexterity and flow and mobility of life. This piece borrows from the spirit of 12th-century Immortal Sister Sun Bu‘er infused with Taiwan’s national recommendation of anti-covid herbal tea.

lololol is a boundless laughter, an endless extension of lol (laugh out loud), an acronym that appears to be constructed by the building blocks of I-Ching and/or computer code. Founded by Xia Lin and Sheryl Cheung in 2013.

Dimension of Sea—Keelung 

2 min. 58 sec., 2024

3.8 billion years ago, the scorching Earth began to cool down, and the atmosphere’s temperature plummeted, leading to a relentless tempest that lasted for millions of years. The rain marked the beginning of the ocean, and the genesis of life forms, consciousness, and waves of cultures.

Dimension of Sea is a data sculpture that records the water colors of the city of rain, Keelung, breaking it down into different data dimensions, witnessing the ever-continuing cycle of waves. By using artificial intelligence to compress 30 days of tidal observation images from the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Keelung Port, the “Generative Adversarial Network AI” re-layers and generates poetic artistry, allowing the waves to be reborn in the virtual world, perpetuating the enduring impression of the city of rain.

Jiun-Ting Lai is a new media artist born and raised in Taipei. His practice focuses on the relationship between technology rights and individuals. He is currently working on the subject of “cognitive enhancement based on human-AI integration” through experimenting with wearable and intricately integrated devices that enhance human cognition as an intermediary means to resist “implantable surveillance capitalism.” He utilizes electroreception of the human tongue to create perceptual sculpture and experiments with the potentiality of human cognitive enhancement on the body part in an invasive yet non-implanted fashion. At the moment, he continues exploring electro-tactility as a form of art in Taipei.

ICING

7 min., 2021 (2024 ver.)

Using numerous phones to play games, the Pokemon Grandpa has created a unique persona in society. He is recorded on Wikipedia, covered by the media, and has even received job invitations because of it. However, carrying so much information alone has led to an overload situation. When faced with the massive wall of phones, you can’t see the joy of playing on his face; instead, you mostly notice the fatigue of handling the vast amount of information. For the sake of the game, having multiple accounts brings him troubles akin to a split personality. His bicycle, once a means of transportation, has lost its practical function. It now serves to carry multiple phones and a power system, limiting his field of vision and mobility and exceeding regulatory modifications, making it unroadworthy. The bicycle has transformed from a human transport tool into a support frame for technological devices. In this relationship, the person is compressed, losing subjectivity, and instead becomes subservient to the tools or merely acts as the activation code for a series of game stages.

Yen-Cheng Chen born in 1998 in Taiwan, graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at the National Taiwan University of Arts. He mainly uses video and installations as his creative media. He also runs a video production company, serving as both director and motion photographer. 

Imitation Training

7 min., 2022 (2024 ver.) 

In the movie Snake in Eagle’s Shadow (1978), the lead actor undergoes training in martial arts through imitation. This work, using deepfakes, zeroes in on childhood memories of pretending to be kung fu movie stars. In the process practice and calculation, martial arts and technology, Jackie Chan and the self all gradually converge. When “technology” no longer refers to technology itself, it becomes a tool of nostalgia. This video presents the transformation in my relation with kung fu movies from pure spectator to collaborative editor and the gradual digitization process between physical and artificial interfaces.

Chen Chen was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1997 and graduated from the Master’s program in the Department of Fine Arts at TNUA. His main creative form is video installation. Through various digital interfaces, technologies, equipment, and experiences, he deconstructs and remakes the martial arts films of his childhood, constantly contrasting, connecting, and intertwining the images and concepts in the process of shaping them. This allows him to explore issues related to image and virtual embodiment. In 2021, he participated in the residency program for the “The Great Wormhole in the Coastal Mountains Range Film Festival Artist-in-Residence Program” at the Gihak Artlab in Hualien. In 2022, he was shortlisted for the “The 2022 TNUA Contemporary Art Prize” at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts. In 2023, participated in the Digital Art Festival Taipei “DAFT x ARKO Video Art Screening Project”.

It was just a virtual kiss

7 min. 9 sec., 2020 (2024 ver.)

The love story set in the online game World of Warcraft becomes the basis for exploring how players construct their virtual bodies in the digital world and how these bodies extend into digital form. In this process, the game becomes a medium through which players can touch, embrace, and kiss one another, embodying their avatars in different fantasy races. By crossing to the other side of the screen, players create the illusion of physical and emotional connection, overcoming the limitations of their real bodies. This digital construction of the body is heavily shaped by machinima and computer-generated animation. The game world links digital haptic perception with real-world movement, allowing free traversal between the physical and virtual realms.

Being in the game world raises important questions: Are there other ways our bodies can exist? How far can the media really expand to overcome the physical limitations of our bodies? Will new forms of connection and romance emerge from these digital bodies? Are we anticipating entirely new emotional connections?

Poyuan Juan based in Taipei, is an artist, gamer, and internet addict, has long focused on digital games, cyberspace, and cyberqueer with digital archaeology as the core concept of his creative context. With a learning background in visual arts, he reflects on digital technology from the perspectives of sculpture, painting, and printmaking, presenting a new perspective and way of thinking to reflect on and question the meta-setting behind this post-Internet era.
 Poyuan Juan’s recent works focus on how to penetrate the technical objects and materials behind digital interfaces and images, thinking about digital technology and the contemporary situation in the digital technology world, and how digitalization reconstructs our perception. 

Jakarta Event Book

7 min., 2021 (2024 ver.)

Jarkarta Event Book is derived from the 1595 publication Itinerario by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a Dutch cartographer for the Portuguese East India Company. The book documented numerous sailors’ observations and local legends, with the sea monsters on its maps being a key element in constructing Jarkarta Event Book. The main creative method of Jarkarta Event Book is the “rewriting” of world geography. The artist uses Jakarta, the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company in Asia, as a reference point, attempting to create a virtual surface using space remote sensing imagery technology. By employing “pseudo-history,” they create a documentary, exploring a virtual space from a first-person perspective to reconnect and link fragmented historical events. The artist utilizes satellite remote sensing imagery, integrating real-time global observations with digital 3D point cloud technology to multi-temporal establish a composite, surface layer. This layer combines ancient maps from Itinerario with modern remote sensing images, creating a new surface that stitches together different eras, aiming to mend temporal fractures. Through “rewriting” texts, the artist reflects on and creates a technological narrative. 

Margot Guillemot and Chiehsen Chiu focus on spatial expression strategies and cartography, integrating perception, form, and historical analysis. Their works have been exhibited at Double Square Gallery (2022), Jogja Biennale (2021), Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (2021), Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (2021), and received the X-Site Project award from the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2021. 

Wandering Ghost No.4 

3 min. 52 sec., 2020

Wandering Ghost No.4 is a VR installation that features a vertical, mechanical platform where users wear VR headsets and move through a simulated tower. Inspired by the Tower of Babel from Genesis, which symbolized humanity’s failed attempt to reach heaven, the installation reflects on the concept of “utopia”—a paradoxical notion of a perfect place that doesn’t exist. The artist constructs a virtual Tower of Babel, combining historical and ruinous elements to illustrate the loss of unified language and cultural fragmentation. This collapsing tower serves as a metaphor for modern global events and the ongoing quest for meaning in a never-ending historical cycle, urging reflection on the true nature of “utopia.”

Ya-Lun Tao was born in Taipei, Taiwan. Ya-Lun Tao is a pioneer in the Taiwanese new media art scene. He is the recipient of numerous prestigious honors and awards, including the International Digital Festival of Contemporary New Media Art (MADATAC) in Madrid, Spain; the most iconic contemporary art award in Taiwan—the Taipei Arts Award; and the Taipei County Prize. He participated in numerous artistic residencies in Europe and The USA. Ya-Lun has also held solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Taipei; the Digital Art Center, Taipei; the Taipei Fine Arts Museum; the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, the Hong Kong Arts Center; the Headland Center for the Arts in San Francisco; the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts; IT Park; and Double Square Gallery.