“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” With the current frenzy around technological developments, is it the case now, following George Orwell’s saying from 1984, that “who controls the technology controls the present?”
In this issue, we are featuring three artists: Lawrence Lek depicts a post-human automated world built around artificial intelligence with the capacity of perception and creativity using computer-generated videos resembling computer games. The gamified simulations present an ongoing rhapsody of history and bombardment by modern science fiction. Cheng Hsien-Yu uses a combination of programming, signals and electronics to decipher the relationship between human behavior, emotions and machines, thereby revealing the present situation where we are surrounded by technology. Artistic duo exonemo tries to challenge our attachment to digital interfaces and technical images, picking up the mouses, screens, connection speed, computing, touch and remote socializing that we have long lost actual control of…
This issue includes essays by Chen Chiao, who proposes the theory that we would eventually become unable to break away from our digital incarnations and footprints in this age of mixed reality and metaverse, and slowly turn into “metahumans” who are constantly examining and monitoring ourselves. Chen Wan-Yin analyzes the close but subtle ties between automation technology and governance, and tries to imagine the possible reshaping of technology through the technique errors caused by the different processes in technological development. Gabriele de Seta has been exploring the deepfake application and cultural effects of the “Huanlian” (Changing Faces) technology, and examines the complex challenges it poses on creativity, privacy, regulation and reality born out of various visual synthetization technology led by online media companies and memes created by Internet users. Yen Wang-Yun looks into the global practice of complex images and time-based media art that explores the areas of data, algorithms, artificial intelligence, perception and recognition technology through the recent global media art festivals.
This issue also covers interviews with philosophers Hui Yuk and Han Byung-Chul as they share their observations on the societal changes under global centralization of technology. Hui Yuk believes that the time is ripe to reverse the question: not to ask how technology may transform the concept of art, but how art can transform technology. He calls for technodiversity, where the solution transcends realpolitik and contemporary technological developments through a transformation of the existing relationship between art, technology, and thinking. On the other hand, Han points out that humans, as datasexuals, are entering a world of “non-things”, devoid of objects and perception of objects, and becoming addicted to fast information and entertainment provided limitlessly in a digital comfort zone. Han warns that our future will be one where our basic desires are exploited by digital capitalism and our pleasures dominated and managed, just like what Aldous Huxley foresaw in Brave New World.
In addition, Lee Li-Chun recounts the history of photography’s failures. Beginning from the first x-ray photographs that were considered spoiled, to the “defects” such as spots, scratches and shadows on chemically developed photographs, he shows how the materiality of photography hides within it creative ideas and messages that are waiting to be studied. Helena Chen examines French photographer Auguste Salzmann’s archaeological expedition in Jerusalem and demonstrates the tense relationship between scientific documentation and artistic creation. Shih Wei-Chu recaps the Taiwanese experience with films during the Japanese occupation between 1920s and 1930s and traces the modernistic aspirations of Taiwan’s first generation of “kinema fans”. Lee Wei-I looks back at how the local historical perception of Taiwan’s military and culture, and the remote empathy of the United States’ achievement was ever so slightly influenced by the audio-visual event of the US space flight at the Taichung Park in 1963.
本期目錄 Contents
陸明龍
Lawrence Lek
訪談─張瑋 Interview by Chang Wei
鄭先喻
Cheng Hsien-Yu
訪談─李佳霖 Interview by Angie Lee
エキソニモ
exonemo
訪談─李威儀 Interview by Lee Wei-I
魅他域，我，以及我的數位雙生
Metaverse, Me, and My Digital Twins
陳蕉 Chen Chiao
自動化之後：想像技術錯誤與生態重構
After Automation: Imagine Technique Error and Terraforming
陳琬尹 Chen Wan-Yin
複合影像與資訊基礎設施：全球媒體藝術節觀察
Complex Images and Data Infrastructure:
An Observation of Global Media Art Festivals
閻望雲 Yen Wang-Yun
換臉：二十一世紀中國的深偽技術簡史
Huanlian, or Changing Faces:
A Brief History of Deepfakes in 21st Century China
胡子哥 Gabriele de Seta
行星思維：藝術如何可以改造技術──專訪許煜
Planetary Thinking: How Art Can Transform Technology
An Interview with Hui Yuk
訪談─安德司．敦克爾 Interview by Anders Dunker
冷戰、活電視與1963年台中公園的美國太空飛行視聽事件
Cold War, Live TV, and the Audio-Visual Event of the US Space Flight at Taichung Park in 1963
李威儀 Wei-I Lee
攝影的失敗簡史：雜訊
A Brief History of Photography’s Failures: Noises
李立鈞 Lee Li-Chun
十九世紀中葉法國考古攝影中的「科學」與「藝術」：
奧古斯特．薩爾茲曼的耶路撒冷考察
Science and Art in Mid-19-Century Photography: Auguste Salzmann’s Archaeological Expedition in Jerusalem
陳傳揚 Helena Chen
以光刻鑿的記憶──電影通向世界的荊棘之道
Memories Engraved through Light: Film as the Path with Briars to the World
史惟筑 Shih Wei-Chu
非物：美麗新世界的數位版寓言──專訪韓炳哲
Non-things: A Digital Fable of A Brave New World
An Interview with Han Byung-Chul
訪談──塞吉奧．C．凡胡爾 Interview by Sergio C. Fanjul