If you haven't yet been to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMFA) in Taichung to see the results of its long-term fabulous interior renovation, you now have one of the best reasons to visit. An exhibition from Europe of internationally acclaimed digital art projects, computer animations and audience-activated art installations opens this weekend.
The museum, in collaboration with the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria and the curating team of Taiwan-based Unison 8, will introduce noteworthy experimental, cyber and technological art from the past 25 years. Many of the works on view are interactive, and this doesn't mean you merely just click on a mouse. The works allow visitors to participate in the creative process, thus blurring the boundaries between art, the audience and the museum. For this exhibition, you will not be a passive spectator, but can get involved with the latest in technological art.
The NTMFA hopes by bringing these award-winning art works to Taiwan it will help further the development of Taiwan's cultural creative industry and shows the public what technology can offer.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ART
Founded in 1979, Ars Electronica is a leader in digital art with its art residencies, media art center, and exhibition space. It also hosts an annual Prix Ars Electronica. This is the first time that Ars Electronica is exhibiting in Asia. The works on view are 100 prize-winning computer-generated animations, a series of interactive installation works that you are encouraged to touch, wear and move around in, and 50 documentaries showing various Ars Electronica projects.
In Kazuhiko Hachiya's Inter Dis-Communication Machine, two people can put on separate headgear, which gives the view from the other person -- in effect you are seeing what your partner is seeing (projected into your headgear) and vice versa. But be careful, by participating in this artwork, there is a good chance of losing your identity.
Daniel Rozin's Trash Mirror is a marvel of technology. Composed of various pieces of trash, which are then connected to motors and wired to a computer, it reflects anyone who stands directly in front of it. It shows that mathematical computation can make sense out of disposable trash.
The prize-winning computer animations show the results of the most innovative software and run the gamut from show-business-like entertainment to more serious human interest matters. In other words, there looks like there is something to suit everyone's tastes from the computer geek's to the avant-garde artist's to the manga lover's to the Hollywood movie buff's.
For computer animations, some outstanding works include Like a Rolling Stone by Pierre Buffin and Michel Gondry, which was awarded the 1996 Award of Distinction. Another music video by Buffin, The Chemical Brothers utilizes mosaic effects and received an honorary mention in 2000.
Many of the animations feature the works from several studios. Digital Domain, which does animations for Dreamworks, exhibits their The Time Machine (2002). In it, the passage of time is condensed, thus showing what geological changes may have occurred during the Ice Age.
Some computer-generated images you may have seen in featured films such as David Fincher's Panic Room. But since CGI technology is becoming so seamless, you may not have known that the scene where dust is falling from the pounding of a hammer is completely digital and was created on computers by the French 3-D production team BUF.
One of the more sober offerings is Chris Landreth's Ryan, which won the Golden Nica last year. This short film combines 3-D CGI animation and documentary film to tell the true-life story of Ryan Larkin, the highly esteemed and influential Canadian animator renowned for his animations 35 years ago, but who now panhandles in downtown Montreal.
Maybe, there's a moral in there somewhere?
What: Climax: The Highlight of Ars Electronica, award-winning international digital art
Where: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, 2 Wu-chuan W Rd Sec 1, Taichung (
Tel: 886 (04) 2372 3552
When: July 2 to Aug 28,
Tuesdays to Sundays, 9am to 5pm. Closed Mondays.
Opening: Saturday July 2, 6pm. Panel discussion: July 3, 9am to 5pm
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