主編語
Editor-in-chief’s Note

Editor's Note

CHIU Chih-Yung

Abstract

In 2018, the International Council of Museums took "Hyperconnected Museums: new approaches, new publics" as its theme, which the future engaged with contemporary art and cultural institutions and technologies. In the early days, art museums considered technologies a tool, taking advantage of its characteristics to represent museum collections' splendor in digital form, and reshape the cultural presentation mechanism. Today, at the onset of museum 2.0, the introduction of new media and digital technologies into museums has become a global trend in museums' development. On the one hand, the interactive, digital, and novel applied display technology has shortened the distance between museums and visitors, allowing museums to present more vividly. On the other hand, the diversity, dynamism, and openness of digital artistic practices have become architectural spaces that challenge traditional white cubes and black boxes. For instance, the British Museum launched the "Virtual Reality Weekend" in 2015, adopting virtual reality technology in exhibitions. When visitors wore the Samsung Gear VR, they were immediately transported to the Bronze Age, 3,500 years ago. Facing a dome with an open gate, visitors can enter the space and see the 3D-scanned bronze artifacts closely, hearing the wood-burning and birds chirping. The collaboration exhibition between the British Museum and Samsung attracted more than 1,200 visitors within just two days, which was significantly successful. 

Under this trend, major museums in Taiwan, such as the National Palace Museum, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, have introduced new media art or technology-based art exhibitions, aiming to reshape museums' characteristics with new types of art exhibitions. Therefore, the symbiotic relationship between art museums and technology is apparent. This issue will take "Art Museums and Digital Technology" as its theme to explore the symbiotic relationship between contemporary new media, digital technology, and art museums. Two thematic articles are included in this issue: "Reenacting Rituals and Subverting Official Histories―Chia-Wei Hsu's Marshal Tie Jia and Its Strategies (20122016)," written by Cheng Hsin-yun in English, explores the ethnographical turn in contemporary art reflected by Hsu Chia-wei's trilogy works, which integrate images, text, and installations. Through work analysis, the author investigates approaches that connect regional cultural networks by analyzing Hsu's works. From the perspective of technology-based art, Li Ping-yeh discusses the representation of paintings in image technology in his "Experiments and Reflections on Painting’s Derivative Layer: Pixelinterface and Style Transfer" Li tries to interpret the phenomenon that we appreciate paintings through light, pixels, and algorithms and proposes the notion of "Derivative Layer" given to paintings through image technology, writing about the irreversible interdependence between today's paintings and image interface. 
 

Besides, two articles are included through a general open call and analyze individual artists' creative process in photography and sculpture, respectively. In Lu Hsiao-yu's "The Alchemy of Motherhood: An Analysis of Wang Hsiao-ching's Photographic Works," she looks at how Wang Hsiao-ching expands the creative significance of mothering and nurturing to creative artistic practices. Lu also turns the one-way birth (mother to child) to a mutual (mother and child) life narrative process of reflection, growth and decline, and cycle of aging and growth. Chang Ching-wen analyzes the "Oriental consciousness" in Cynthia Sah's works after the 1990s in "Exploring the Way of Nature through the thinking of 'L'écart': An Analysis on Cynthia Sah's Sculpture." With "l'écart" (the gap) proposed by French scholar François Jullien, Chang aims to distinguish the difference between Sah's view of creation and the Orientalized discourses emphasizing one's identity in Taiwan's abstract sculpture; from there, Chang discusses the intention of the "Oriental consciousness" in Sah's works.

To sum up, although the limited amount and topics of articles in this issue cannot reflect the complicated relationship between art museums and technology on a large scale, they can still provide a different perspective to the readers. 

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Reenacting Rituals and Subverting Official Histories:ChiaWei Hsu's Marshal Tie Jia & Its Strategies

CHENG Hsin-Yun

University of Rochester, Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, Ph.D. Student

Abstract

Taiwanese artist Chia-Wei Hsu’s (1983-) trilogy Marshal Tie Jia (2012-2016) echoes the “ethnographic turn” in Taiwanese contemporary art and provides a pattern of cultural networks opposed to the integrity of nation-state. This article discusses these three works from the dimensions of “ethnographic turn” and the potentiality of ritual and performance. By investigating folk rituals and staging performances in Turtle Island (Matsu, Taiwan) and Jingsi Village (Jiangxi, China), the first two works of Marshal named after the aforementioned villages—Turtle Island (2012) and Jingsi Village (2013)—connects two seemingly unrelated locales that share a folk belief in a frog god, a belief that slowly immigrated from China to the Matsu Islands. These cross-regional networking connections, different from viewing Taiwan and China as a whole or viewing them as two separate entities—reflect on the cultural purges by state powers in the postwar Taiwan and China. By revisiting the folk cultural legacy and memory, these works challenge the authority of the official history enacted by the Chinese Communist government and the Kuomintang government in Taiwan, respectively. The third work, Spirit-Writing (2016), explores the possibility of capturing the spiritual essence and invisibility of a god by using contemporary virtual modeling technology. This article considers two contributions of Marshal Tie Jia: On the one hand, the ethnographic investigation dismantles the top-down structure of official ideology, carving out discursive spaces for subjective narratives. On the other hand, the emphasis of the transformative potentials of ritual performance and bodily memory—replacement and reinvention—reopens the possibility to reinterpret history

Keywords: Chia-Wei Hsu, Marshal Tie Jia, ethnography, ritual, bodily memory

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Experiments and Reflections on Painting's Derivative Layer: Pixel-interface and Style Transfer

LI Ping-Yeh

Assistant Professor, Department of Arts and Design, National Taipei University of Education

Abstract

This research starts from the presentation of painting in visual technology. It understands the phenomenon that paintings are now appreciated through light, pixels and algorithms, and proposes the concept of “derivative layer” on paintings, which suggests the irreversible interdependences between paintings and visual interface today. This concept of derivative layer overlaps with the “parergon” theory proposed by Derrida, forms an interesting area of study. This research refers to a research-throughdesign methodology. It investigates the various states and discussions when painting is converted to pixel data through new media practice: multiple pixel-interfaces and style transfer images. This research concludes: First, the derivative layer of painting, in the visual interfaces, has a strong autonomous character. It also challenges the issue of the boundaries of Art. Second, the reading of painting images in visual technology is intertextual. That is, new media technology explores the traces of a specific painting image in a wider range of images. It also explores the visual attributes and experiences in different interfaces. Third, the transcoding of painting images also leads to the modularization of style attributes, which will also arise the issue of “impossibility of styles”.

Keywords: painting, derivative layer, pixel-interface, style transfer, parergon

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The Alchemy of Mothering Analysis of Annie Hsiao Ching Wang’s Photographs

Lu Hsiao-Yu

Ph.D. Women’s and Gender Studies, University Paris 8

Abstract

With an obvious purpose of enlightenment and cultivation, Madonna and Child depicted in Western religious paintings has produced for all people the paragon image of an ideal mother. Consequently, mothering imposes on many mothers a trammel in particular the choice between taking care of the family and developing personal career. Starting with quotes of cause analyses of mothering based on feminism and psychoanalysis, this essay clarifies that being a woman and being a dedicated mother does not go with the territory. Focused on “chora” a philosophical term refers to conception of the young, the essay further manifests subjectivity of a conceiver with implications of fertility, abundance and inexhaustibleness of that term. 

Expanding the purport of a mother’s life creation in propagation and nurturing to her art creation, Wang’s photographic creations not only record family commemorations, but also witness a mother taking the role of an artist. Photographs of the past 20 years keep track of different life stages of the artist and the growth process of her child. More importantly, transformation of “cliché” by art has also been verified, turning strenuous motherhood practices into unique artistic practices.

Keywords: Madonna and Child, Mothering, Chora, Mise en abyme, Durée

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Exploring the Way of Nature Through the Concept of l'Écart：Study on Cynthia SAH's Sculpture Works

CHANG Ching-Wen

Assistant Professor, Department of Arts and Design, National Tsing Hua University

Abstract

Contemporary sculptures created by Cynthia Sah (1952–) are eulogized by the local and foreign critics for the profound “orientality” contained within. In Taiwan, such thought also constitutes a crucial subject regarding contemporary sculpture theories. Although Sah is of Chinese origin and has accumulated substantial practices of creating artworks in Taiwan, then she developed her sculpting skills in the United States and Europe in the 1970s. Since 1979, she has permanently resided in Italy. On this account, her works should not be interpreted solely based on the discourse of orientalitycomposed by the nationalism and the nativism rendered in Taiwanese art history. This essay examines Sah’s works created after the 1990s with a focus on the orientality comprised in her artistic creations. By drawing on the concept of l’ écart coined by François Jullien, I aim to analyze the difference between the orientality presented in Sah’s works, and the orientality that stresses on the complex of national/self-identity, which also has been principally deployed in Taiwanese art discourses of abstract sculpture. On the basis, I furthermore explore the the undertone of the orientallity in Sah’s works. In this regard, my study finds that the orientality conveyed in her work is associated with her life experience; moreover, the concept of l’écart is manifested in her creations. With the concept of nature as her grand theme, Sah has created her own series of works. The resultant abstract sculptures are similar in appearance but exhibit unique forms. They depict natural objects but not simply through imitation of shapes or reproduction of symbols. Instead, they demonstrate the relationship between nature and the self by evincing the concept of the void in an attempt to attain a balance between mundaneness and aesthetic grandeur. In sum, the aspect of orientality in her works is illustrated by the artist and her view of nature. Intriguingly, Sah’s sculptures express the artist’s yearning and understanding of nature by the uses of abstraction.

Keywords: Cynthia SAH, écart, Oriental thoughts, view of nature

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