The Museum of Contemporary Art's Digital Sublime: New Masters of Universe opened up to great fanfare last weekend: dignitaries gave speeches, roaming waiters served sparkling beverages and cakes, and South Korean artist Jong Bum-choi gave a live performance of sound and light images projected on MOCA's facade. After two humongous white moon-shaped balloons were ceremoniously rolled away from the entrance, the exhibition officially opened and the huge art-going crowd poured in.
The Seoul Museum of Art curator Wonil Rhee who had previously organized Media City Seoul 2002 brought together 23 international digital artists for an exhibition consisting of computers, videos, paintings and photography that is a visual delight with a happy message. Lately we've been inundated with perversely morbid images from the political realm, so it's refreshing to see images that make us see the beauty in the world around us. In these dangerous times, a little bit of awe of creation goes a long way. However, even though the technology is complicated, the exhibition has a painterly focus and is not intensely conceptual allowing easier accessibility to the viewer.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MOCA
Lee Kyung-ho's Digital Moon installation epitomizes the show's theme of linking the Zen-like contemplation of the moon's reflected light with the unearthly glow of computer screens. Three large circles of light are projected in a room incorporating the viewer into a kaleidoscope of shapes, while slow moody music makes this a room for quiet
contemplation.
The exhibition often refers to Christian themes to tell us that a resurrection of possibilities exists at the click of a mouse. Strikingly, even though many of the displayed works are interactive, they don't seem deeply engaging but rather flat technical displays of what technology can do. You move a mouse around on a pad and you get a squiggle on a screen as in Golan Levin's Aurora &
Yellowtail and Miltos Manetas' Jacksonpollock.org.
Perhaps it is the limitation of technology as the imagery is controlled by its program and not by the user.
Digital art with sound easily crosses over into the domain of the nightclub scene. Wang Fujui's
More conceptually, Eva Stenram wittingly uses digital means to explore the semantic meanings in how we construct our world. The architectural surfaces of royal estates such as Windsor House and Balmoral House are superimposed on a block of low-income housing estates.
Some works hint at the dystopic aspects of technology. Joseph Nechvatal's Luna vOluptuary shows a computer virus slowly consuming and eating up a pain ting image. Jose Carlos Casado's riveting double-screen video installation Pandora's Box wryly shows a woman opening the infamous box online and unleashing wonderful cyber images. Will our new technologies unleash similar troubles?
Last week the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) announced that the legislature would again amend the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) to separate fiscal allocations for the three outlying counties of Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu from the 19 municipalities on Taiwan proper. The revisions to the act to redistribute the national tax revenues were passed in December last year. Prior to the new law, the central government received 75 percent of tax revenues, while the local governments took 25 percent. The revisions gave the central government 60 percent, and boosted the local government share to 40 percent,
Many will be surprised to discover that the electoral voting numbers in recent elections do not entirely line up with what the actual voting results show. Swing voters decide elections, but in recent elections, the results offer a different and surprisingly consistent message. And there is one overarching theme: a very democratic preference for balance. SOME CAVEATS Putting a number on the number of swing voters is surprisingly slippery. Because swing voters favor different parties depending on the type of election, it is hard to separate die-hard voters leaning towards one party or the other. Complicating matters is that some voters are
Sept 22 to Sept 28 Hsu Hsih (許石) never forgot the international student gathering he attended in Japan, where participants were asked to sing a folk song from their homeland. When it came to the Taiwanese students, they looked at each other, unable to recall a single tune. Taiwan doesn’t have folk songs, they said. Their classmates were incredulous: “How can that be? How can a place have no folk songs?” The experience deeply embarrassed Hsu, who was studying music. After returning to Taiwan in 1946, he set out to collect the island’s forgotten tunes, from Hoklo (Taiwanese) epics to operatic
Five years ago, on the verge of the first COVID lockdown, I wrote an article asking what seemed to be an extremely niche question: why do some people invert their controls when playing 3D games? A majority of players push down on the controller to make their onscreen character look down, and up to make them look up. But there is a sizable minority who do the opposite, controlling their avatars like a pilot controls a plane, pulling back to go up. For most modern games, this requires going into the settings and reconfiguring the default controls. Why do they
RSS