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?
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would