顧世勇
Ku Shih-Yung
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From Traditional Images to Digital Creations
中文
text by Ku Shih-Yung

In terms of the past, images are usually only accepted when they contain objects that actually exist. In other words, at the decisive moment the shutter opens the camera is invariably focused on an arena that used to exist. This irreversible past reality thereby becomes a one-time thing and the fact it no longer exists and cannot be restored creates a conscious sense of sentimentality concerning things that have disappeared. This in turn turns it into a virtual object of perception, highlighting the difference between existence and non-existence. Although the reason images have such a powerful emotional impact on people is based on the truism that what has gone cannot be restored, perhaps an even more fundamental point of interest is the way they allude to the fact that the future is itself destined to similarly become the past, or to put it more bluntly the beckoning of death. In this sense, although images relate to the death of the past they also hint at the impending passing of a yet to occur future. But engages our sentimentality is that images speak simultaneously to the past, present and future.

The power of traditional images is rooted in time consciousness. As the linear progression of the past, present and future implied by this passing of time is obfuscated, the detachment of the image from its original reality is no longer important and the sense of breadth and depth attached to it disappears. The vitality of contemporary images consistently revolves around the loss of any real sense of real time.

In seeking to understand the way people view the world, by tracing the development of images we are able to identify a process that is divided into three broad stages: 1) A surface representation whereby images record actual events. 2) An expression of image depth. 3) A perception created by the image. In the first stage there exists a relationship of mutual interconnection between the image and reality. This serves to confirm time, place and event and can also be seen as surface text. In the second stage the image penetrates to the depths of human psychological makeup thereby becoming an extension of the sub conscious. At this point, the image is no longer an equivalent record of reality but automatically transformed into an expression of the image in itself. The linear cause and effect time sequence of reality gradually disappears, as dreamlike asynchronous time becomes mixed with real time and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the possible from the real world. The images created in the third stage utilize technological developments to infuse constructs in the second period with perceptual truth.

Not only have modern technological developments not made us more materialistic, they have in essence served to make us believe in a non-material created world. The creation of such constructs has long been the realm of art, but faced with competition from science certain artists have chosen to embrace the referential value and precision formally reserved for science, taking the experiential nature of expressive materials and natural growth back to the foundation of physical experience. In his works the artist 波伊斯 uses the physical perception inherent in touch to display essence and in so doing strictly adheres to the strict verification standards of empirical science. Moreover, as media increasingly mimics reality, social reality and the world of work are becoming more virtual and experience less physical in nature.

Virtuality and the ability of reversal are two key elements in technological development. As part of artificial intelligence reality can be copied and repeated anytime. Cinema and computer reproductions and similar technology are always available, able to mimic everything in the possible world. The fact that the “world” can be universally copied in this way serves to blur the line between the real and the created world. It is true to say that today the two are developing in parallel.

Through the current exhibition based on computer graphic databases, IT Park Gallery offers varying artistic interpretations on the relationship between the real and created world. Digital image files are a technology that creates a virtual world on the basis of semiotics. The hostile attitude of traditional image workers towards virtuality derives from the fact that they see such images as a form of bogus technology, autonomous and unconnected to man. Such individuals fail to understand the virtual world as a cultural process built jointly by people, technology and the world. This relationship can be divided into four categories: concrete realization, textual interpretation, substitution, and mutually intermingling. These four perspectives provide a better understanding of the virtual world by comparing the technological determinism of virtuality and imitation.

1. Concrete realization: This refers to the fact that technology has, to a certain extent, become part of daily life, which is to say that it has become the extension of one aspect of physical human ability and therefore part of what being human is all about. In this sense, technology is a tool used to facilitate transparency, for example we use spectacles to view the world and microscopes to observe cells. In other words, virtual reality helps to make real reality more transparent and therefore cannot be said to replace it in any way. From this perspective virtual reality can be likened to spectacles or a microscope providing us with a more concrete representation of the world.

2. Textual interpretation: In this relationship technology is viewed differently to how it is seen in concrete realization. Rather than helping people to face the world directly, it instead offers an abstract interpretation. For example, using binoculars to look at something in the distance is concrete realization, whereas locating a place on a map is textual interpretation. In this situation, people face the world through the abstract semiotics used in graphics technology. What this technology shows us is not the sort of physical extension we identified in concrete realization, but an extension of language. In textual interpretation the world is first transformed by technology into a text is then used to interpret reality.

3. Substitution: This relationship originates in the human pursuit of “Automation.” Its original intent can be found in man’s desire to produce things that not only represent human will but also replace humanity, that is to say the human desire that technology will replace people in their relationship with the world. In the first two relationships man strives to incorporate technology as an expression of his own power. In substitution this situation is reversed as man infuses a technological replacement with his own wishes and strength. It is worth noting that as part of this substitution relationship the world is a world that “we” can control (by inputting instructions one achieves output and feedback used to make adjustments) or perhaps a world in which our wishes come true.

4. Mutual intermingling: When the technology in one’s living environment becomes part of the normal backdrop of life then a fourth type of relationship between people and technology develops – mutual intermingling. Buildings, natural gas, furniture, telephones, televisions, computers etc. effectively combine to create a special world - a “technological jungle” (what Heidegger called “being-in-the-world”). From this point people can live relatively independently in the world beyond the “technological jungle.” This intermixing shows that technology has effectively become an unavoidable part of our existence, the backdrop against which we live, clarifying how we live and changes therein. With such intermingling the distance between man, technology and the world disappears, as technology becomes one element of human nature and a structural tool for the world. In terms of virtual reality two situations facilitate considerable intermingling. 1) When people are immersed in a virtual world that virtuality forms a special living environment. For individuals in this situation this is a classic “technological jungle.” Because it is difficult to mix virtual and actual reality, however high the “resolution,” virtual reality serves as more than a copy of reality for those within it, it is a new way of seeming even more real. What it does is establish a relatively new environment and world, so those immersed can enjoy an unprecedented new life. 2) If we were not excessively conservative then it would be possible to accept virtual reality as an organic part of the human living environment and world. Given this prerequisite, virtual reality and actual reality would be complementary and not in a relationship where one replaces and the other is replaced.

The Image Database Exhibition reveals the world of relative independence that virtual reality forms and a world in which virtual and actual reality coexist and develop life in unison. It demonstrates the possibility of coexistence between man and technology, in the sense that the world built by man will continue to progress and expand. As such, virtual reality and broadly defined virtual technology mark a new development in the world governed by men - in terms of how people perceive, understand, desire and build the world. This emphatically is not an example of the object transcending the subject, as expressed by those with a more pessimistic view of the world.
 
 
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Art Director / Chen Hui-Chiao Programer / Kej Jang, Boggy Jang