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Arts' adventure playground

Wang De-yu's No. 50 is a large airbag that fills half the ground floor of Taipei's Museum of Contemporary Art. PHOTO COURTESY OF MUSEUM OFCONTEMPORARY ART

The closing instalment of the Museum of Contemporary Art's (台北當代藝術館) TAT: Taiwanese Artists Today (搞破壞台灣藝術家個展) series presents a double exhibition from two 1970s artists, who often take a more playful attitude to artistic creation than their predecessors.

Adrift, (漫無目的) consisting of Wang De-yu's (王德瑜) No.50, and EX-TT-03, plus four galleries of Huang Shih-chie's (黃世傑) untitled kinetic installations, serves as a contrast to MOCA's ongoing exhibition on the second floor by established artist Mei Dean-E, which has a heavier tone and more serious subject matter.

Wang's No. 50 is a continuation of her series of large plastic airbags made specifically to fill gallery spaces. The whole east wing of the museum is taken up by one white translucent airbag. Visitors may crawl into its crack or wade through it to experience the volume of air inside. The work, Wang said in an introduction to the show, means to provoke viewers to return to the primal state of human interaction with the world, in which they heavily rely on their senses to explore their surroundings.

Huang Shih-chie's kinetic installations surprise viewers with their unpredictable responses. PHOTO COURTESY OF MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

The way to understanding the work lies not in the head, but in our intrinsic sensory perceptions, she said. "I've made a work which is what you see and what you touch. That's it," Wang said.

By stripping her works of any external references or compli-cated messages about society at large, Wang effectively provokes thought on an often neglected subject, with a simple yet beautiful work.

The title EX-TT-03 means nothing to Huang Shih-chie except as a file number. With no set plans in mind, Huang sets out to create his kinetic installations from piecing together several electronic gadgets. He sees himself as a mad scientist in his laboratory.

On flights of fancy, he attaches circuits, tubes, lightbulbs, radios and whatever he happens to have on hand, to the rudimentary assemblage of chips and plastic. The results appear to be like robots, but they are products of impromptu experiments and accidents that Huang describes as otherworldly synthetic life forms, whose sensors enable them to interact with viewers as well as each other.

The New York-based artist visits his homeland once a year and this time he brought with him a big trunk full of random objects in order to create these robotic creatures for the show.

The bric-and-brac which Huang did not use is placed in lines connecting three galleries.

There are packages, fans, bundles of ropes, machinery parts and a lot of plastic bottles, most of which were picked up on Huang's travels around the world and his visits to discount markets.

"I'm always intrigued by the shapes and functions of plastic bottles. I've always wondered what their peculiar shapes are for," Huang said.

Most interesting about Huang's tube-and-bottle life forms are their bewildering set of sensors. Although sensors are a common part of interactive works, the sensors of the two creatures in the first gallery, for instance, have quite unpredictable reactions as the viewer walks up to them, such as blinking their light bulbs or making whirling sounds.

Asked about these these "random" responses, Huang said: "That's what it's all about. It's fun."

"Adrift" and "EX-TT-03" will run through November at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, 39 Changan W Rd. (長安西路39號).
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