Twelve virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) works by Taiwanese artists are represented online in this year’s Ars Electronica Festival, which opened on Wednesday, festival organizers said yesterday.
One of the world’s leading media arts festivals, Ars Electronica is holding its 2020 edition, themed “In Kepler’s Gardens: A global journey mapping the ‘new’ world,” both online and as a physical event.
The festival is taking place “not in spite of Corona [COVID-19], but because of it,” the organizers said on the festival’s Web site.
Photo: CNA
The annual event, dubbed a “festival for art, technology and society,” is taking place in Linz, Austria, as well as in 120 other locations worldwide, through Sunday.
The Taipei-based part of the festival, titled Garden Taipei, was curated by artist Huang Hsin-chien (黃心健) and presented by the Virtual and Physical Media Integration Association of Taiwan, in partnership with several groups including the Taiwan Creative Content Agency and National Taiwan Normal University.
Huang, a professor at the university’s department of design, was a winner of the Best VR Experience Award at the 74th Venice Film Festival in 2017.
The 12 works featured in the Taipei portion include Bodyless (失身記) by Huang; Barkley (小貓巴克里) by Chiu Li-wei (邱立偉); Into the Woods (百年蜃樓尋妖記) by Wang Shih-wei (王世偉); Upload Not Complete by Hu Chin-hsiang (胡縉祥), Tsai Bing-hua (蔡秉樺) and Chang Zhao-qing (張兆慶); and Kuo Hsueh-Hu: Three States of Home Gazing (郭雪湖: 望鄉三態) by Huang and Chang Wen-chieh (張文杰).
Meanwhile, Through the Body (穿越身體), a new work by Huang, is on display at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz as part of the Deep Space 8K program in the physical portion of the festival, organizers said.
An exhibition featuring the participating Taiwanese works is expected to be held later at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, organizers said.
More information about the festival can be found at: ars.electronica.art/keplersgardens.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS