In Let's Make Art: Web Installation (
On March 26, Tseng set up an "artist recruitment" section on her Web site that is linked to the popular search engine www.pchome.com.tw. After filling in their names, e-mail addresses and artistic statements, Internet users can upload jpeg or gif files of their own creation. The files are transferred to a terminal in the exhibition space where a printer connected to the computer prints out the code that constitutes the images, rather than the images themselves. These jumbles of code on A4 paper are framed and hung on the gallery walls. Visitors to the gallery may sit on a cozy mat where they can browse the actual images, which are projected on the wall too.
Dozens of people have taken up the opportunity to participate in the exhibition. Most of them sent digitally manipulated photos of landscapes or their friends. TFAM expects that all the 420 frames available will soon be taken up.
PHOTO: VICO LEE, TAIPEI TIMES
It is not the first time Tseng has questioned the logic of the Internet. For the last two years, Tseng has been pondering the ways the Internet changes our life. Her solo exhibition Click at Shin Leh Yuan Art Space last year consisted of sets of monitors and computer mouses. Viewers clicked on Internet links, but were taken to sites other than the ones they had expected.
Tseng's new work is richer in content. She opened the exhibition on April 1 by asking viewers to think about the identity of artists in the Internet age. "`Who are artists?' is a question raised by the Internet. Is the printer that prints out the code of the image files the artist in the exhibition? Are the Internet users who submitted their works the artists? Or is the Internet?" Tseng asks. "You may think you're an artist when you send your image files [to join the project], but does it really matter? We are all IP addresses in this project. We are just numbers."
Tseng overturns the conventional question about what kind of work makes a person an artist. This is hardly an issue since Tseng puts on the walls not the images people submit but the computer code that makes up these images.
Although neither the display of the codes or the free-for-all concept is particularly new, Let's Make Art does make an interesting suggestion with its title. Tseng may be the first person to define art as something posted on a Web site with a statement next to it. If the Internet allows you to take any role you like, why should anyone balk at being an artist online while also being an office worker in the real world?
For your information:
What: Let's Make Art
Where: Taipei Fine Arts Museum (
When: Until May 11
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless