The Ministry of Culture's "Arts and Technology: Creative Innovation and Counseling Project" has selected three experimental teams to further cultivate Taiwan's artistic and technological undertakings on the international platform. After a fierce competition of 71 submitted works, three teams were selected for displaying their final works in Taipei this November under the 2020 theme "Sci-Fi Prototyping":
• "Overgrown," comprising Wu Kuan-ju (吳冠儒), Tina Piracci, Adam Hutz, Barrak Darweesh, with the "Core Sample (核芯樣本)" project.
• "Nanonano," comprising Hsu Hsun-hsiang (許巽翔), and Huang Yin-hao (黃胤豪), with the "Microscopic City (微觀之城)" project.
• Artists Lo Yu-chun (羅伃君) and Ku Kuang-yi (顧廣毅) with the "Future Museum of Holy Pig (未來神豬博物館)" project.
Technological art is the focus of cultural and technological policies and artistic development. In recent years, the Ministry of Culture has continuously invested resources to support the development of interdisciplinary art creation, encouraging creators to incorporate local cultures, social issues, and applications of new technology. The Ministry has been assisting emerging creators in developing experimental art proposals into full-sized productions and soliciting invitations to present their works on a global scale.
Spearheading the project is Escher Tsai (蔡宏賢), interactive creative director of Dimension Plus (超維度互動有限公司). He explained that this year's theme will be focused on exploring how science fiction materializes in the art realm and how that can spur the creation of scientific and technological experimentations and innovative practices in real life.
With technology as the main backdrop, the selected teams this year will be required to maintain both interdisciplinary and humanistic outlooks. "Core Sample" explores the relationship between ecology and technology as a plant installation combining man and nature. "Microscopic City" will construct the layout of a micro-scaled future city to convey the contemporary saturation of urban development and resource consumption. "Future Museum of Holy Pig" will take the viewers to a swine museum exhibition of all porcine deities from different parallel worlds to predict the future transformation of human religion.
In addition to supporting the three selected teams, the program will also be holding six "Art and Technology" lectures and three workshops, to promote the interdisciplinary evolution of technology and art and create channels for international exchanges. The lectures and workshops aim to explore important local and global issues and will be available to all interested viewers.
The international lineup will include well-known Japanese tech art YouTuber Marina Fujiwara (藤原麻里菜), who will be sharing the value and meaning of her "useless" inventions, and the British-French duo of sound artists Chun Lee (李駿) and Aymeric Mansoux, who will be holding a "Game Boy Synthesizer Workshop" that will bring back retro media, remakes, and audio modifications.
Lastly, in continuance of the "Culture Stew/ Kulttuurihaude" program held last year, Taiwanese artists will be holding a workshop in Finland later this year to discuss methods of sharing and transferring digital human knowledge.
The first lecture was on May 29 by Paul Gong (宮保睿) on "Speculative design and aesthetics of speculation," followed by Lee I-chiao's (李奕樵) "How do literary works drive an unknown mass readership" on June 27.
Then in July and October, there will be additional art-and-technology lectures by Shih Yi-shan (施懿珊), Escher Tsai, Marina Fujiwara, and Sandra Tavali (also known as Li Wuan-chin, 李婉菁).
For more information on upcoming lectures and workshops, please check out: https://www.facebook.com/AND.Taiwan