text by Jo Hsiao
In the future, whoever knows how to collaborate with machines will win. So predict Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the MIT Sloan School of Management in their book The Second Machine Age. According to these two writers, technology always rapidly alters the course of human civilization. For example, the industrial revolution in the late 18th century brought about the fastest transformation in human history: machines replaced the labor of people and beasts. For the first time the human world encountered an unprecedented change, the inception of the first machine age. And history is constantly repeating itself. Today, improvements in computers and other digital technology are influencing the human mind and our ability to build our environment, to control our mental and physical capabilities, and to control the physical environment and the knowledge environment too. The Second Machine Age has arrived. [1]
For a long time, humankind has been able to use technology to create value, and to effectively control value. Nevertheless, human activity has produced a host of unintended consequences beyond the human scale that are impacting the whole earth: The greenhouse effect is causing tropical rain forests to gradually disappear and glaciers to melt. The destruction of soil, sea and air have led to an unprecedented assault on the biosphere. As the situation grows steadily worse, human beings and other species on earth face a crisis of survival engendered by humans themselves. This multitude of problems arising from technology, and its application in industry, has forced people around the world to collectively confront the dramatic changes happening to the global environment.
Only in the last few years, humankind has created the information economy, making computers, software, information networks and other digital technology that influences every aspect of life, from medicine and finance to manufacturing, military affairs, aerospace, and mass consumption. If human beings must divide labor with machines, and even engage with them in dialogue, do we have the ability to confront and manipulate such a collective economic entity achieved through high-frequency algorithms? Or, as digital technology becomes ever mightier, will humankind be powerless to extricate ourselves from the world formed from the structure of technology? An even more complex and problematic dimension is that after humanity has ingested the medicine of technology, our role has transformed from creator to destroyer.
Not long ago the World Climate Summit in Paris met with the aim of curbing global warming, passing a historical agreement to restrict greenhouse gas emissions, maintain the rise of global temperatures within 2℃, and limit carbon emissions. All these efforts reveal the trepidation of the people who dwell on Planet Earth. Humankind must address the catastrophe we are precipitating, and reconsider the conditions necessary for the earth’s survival. Technology has become a panacea, and the power of technology is perpetually growing, thrusting us ever further into the digital age. All information, every medium of expression – text, images, sound, files and pictures – is being converted into the 0’s and 1’s of computer code. With the aid of high-frequency algorithms, everything will be conveyed through big data.
Under these circumstances, Homo sapiens has become a designed creature alive on earth, a sensory function endowed with form. Human desire has ultimately led us step by step into a crisis of our own manufacture, like Sisyphus of Greek mythology, cursed by the gods to endlessly repeat the same task for eternity. By exploring four themes – “Imagining an Unknown Future,” “Relationality,” “Faith” and “Spirituality” – this exhibition seeks to scrutinize precisely what situation human beings find ourselves in as we confront the intelligent technology we have created. Ultimately, what are the human values hidden within our age of radical technology?
Imagining an Unknown Future
The image art of Chuan Lun Wu grapples with the aesthetics of technology. He photographed cast-off animal specimens, and selected images from an image database showing natural settings similar to the habitats where these creatures once lived. Then using 3D software he installed these digital images inside classical-style gold-colored picture frames mounted with decorative animal figures. The entire production process made use of low-cost “things” generated by digital media. This constant replication and reproduction signifies the concept of an abundant, unendangered digital economy. The artist ponders the dual role of the digital as both tool and medium, which is nothing other than a statement of contemporary humanity’s identification with technology, which empowers people to roam all over the real and virtual worlds, possessing greater choices and greater freedom.
The development of human knowledge proceeds through time. Therefore, our existence possesses the quality of historicity. In his lecture “The Resonance of Existence” commenting on the 2nd chapter of Zhuangzi, “On the Uniformity of All Things,” the philosopher Mou Zongsan suggested, “Historicity refers to the human condition in life, in which we face the possibility of a vast number of decisions. Human beings cannot guarantee the outcome of our decisions, but we must bear responsibility for them and face them.”[2] Similarly, technology puts on display the historical journey of human struggle, connecting humanity’s past, present and future, so that through humanity’s own ability to create, technology takes part in changing the world. Chuan Lun Wu amalgamates physical objects (animal specimens) and digital products (computer-generated images and objects), so that after being completely digitized, nature and technology, which seem to run on parallel trajectories, form a unified whole. Thus, to a certain degree Wu uses technology to investigate the new laws of material production. Resorting to technology to give humankind satisfaction is a morally acceptable gain. Put more precisely, for human beings to enjoy the massive changes that technology brings requires no sense of morality! Nevertheless, the essential quality of the things we experience seems to no longer be completely pure. When we directly confront the ecological world that technology constructs, we are trapped in a conundrum.
LuxuryLogico created a handmade template of a bird, and with the use of computer animation software, produced 37,200 separate frames of the bird flying. In so doing, they commenced a children’s journey of art. Grade school kids drew their own pictures on the frames, partaking in a kind of ritual expressing spiritually liberation and freedom. Or one might say, by conveying a simple message they coalesced an enormous collective energy, manifesting a social body engaged with the world. From its inception through the delivery and distribution of its message, the work revealed a sincere desire to prove that technology can be used to create value. Fly! No Matter What! uses digital technology to create an imaginary tomorrow. If the digital environment is increasingly faster and mightier, the future of humankind is unquestionably bound intimately with the scale of innovation and rapid development of computers, machines and other digital devices. All people and technology are joined together in an unknown future.
Relationality
In the 1998 Hollywood comedy “The Truman Show,” the lead character’s life turns out to be nothing but the construct of a reality TV show. Viewers watch Truman on their television sets as he is born, learns to talk, goes to school, falls in love, gets married, gets a job. He lives under the gaze of the public but does not know it. His life is full of phoniness and lies, and yet it is real! Here, the basic, intrinsic feelings of humankind become products to be consumed. “Gazing” and “being gazed upon” always reveal the composite pattern of these feelings. In front of the TV camera, the sum of the body and the consciousness, the brain and the soul are like an experiment on display to the viewing public. And in the process of viewing, the gazed-upon may no longer be able to distinguish whether they are living in reality or fantasy. Cheng-ta Yu considers and amplifies the spectacle of media-immersed society, constantly making use of the electronic media system to project an array of life circumstances toward us, just like the title of his work: “It’s So Reality!” In this work three reality TV show segments are imposed upon three groups of reality TV viewers. In an extremely theatrical manner, the artist alludes to the relationship between “the quest for reality” and human perception.
You Choreograph seems to be a dance without the stylistic imprint of a choreographer. Visitors listen to directions on earphones and act out their own personal bodily movements collectively. The two choreographers have abandoned the black-box spatial design of a theater and instead have installed an open-style stage to encourage visitors to get involved. This artwork is composed of people. Dance allows people to communicate with their bodies. The performers (who are visitors) directly feel the spontaneous experience of bodily creation, as collective action emerges. With a relaxed, joyful tonality, the exhibition space transforms into an arena of social exchange, where positive interactions arise among people. You Choreograph transcends language, text and faith, echoing the states of life that occur when people meet, and resisting the forms of life defined by media-immersed society.
Faith
Stanley Kubrick, the director of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” once said in an interview: “I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001, but not any traditional, anthropomorphic image of God ... I do believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God.”
Clearly, with the arrival of the Second Machine Age, science and technology have already attained an unbreakable mastery over humankind. Just as Kubrick’s science fiction movie suggested: Science reflects people’s concepts of God. Thus, some of the works in this exhibition project utopian fantasies. Within the mode of utopian fantasy, people can completely embrace the rule of technology and collectively bring about a perfect world of universal order. But in the real world where we live, technology plays the role of God. When many plot scenarios that once only existed in science fiction movies materialize in the real world, when we unconsciously operate devices, life comes to resemble the internet, in a repetitious sequence of acceptance and manipulation.
Wang Chung-Kun transforms boat horns, originally used to send warnings or messages, into mechanical musical instruments with tempo and melody. As viewers enter the proximity of the sensors on the wall, they influence the velocity of the sound, changing the flow of the tempo and randomly altering the sound quality. In terms of time and space, this sound installation allows the movements and the force of the human body to issue electronic commands, embedding the real-world environment into a transitorized milieu, and in so doing, turning human movement into an ancient relic.
Spirituality
Chu Teh I’s paintings are two-dimensional, but they are also spatial, “exceeding the bounds” with unbridled expression. Internally, he adheres to a structure manifesting a stable system, while achieving external forms and colors by spontaneously juxtaposing wildly wielded lines and large fields of pigment. The result is a heterogeneous, fragmentary, corresponsive spatiality. The forms in his works counterbalance the rational and the irrational, the cerebral and the visceral, striving for a place where the inexpressible images of things are present. Chu Teh I’s paintings bespeak a fractured, morphing meaninglessness, illuminating a certain environment or event in a particular moment, in response to life experiences of the real world.
With their delicately precise brushstrokes and vivid hues, the paintings of Chang Chia-Ying possess a full beauty that is powerfully convincing to the viewer. Yet perhaps this is a patchy, incomplete misreading. Hidden underneath the lovely images lies a realism that dissects the narratives of fairytales, embracing fantasy yet intermingling a world-wise sensibility. Such enigmatic images arise from the intrinsic nature of the works, which cruelly reveal the true state of people and the environment.
Conclusion
The creator of the British miniseries Black Mirror once said: “If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side effects? This area – between delight and discomfort – is where Black Mirror, my new drama series, is set. The 'black mirror' of the title is the one you'll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone.” The series stringently examines how technology has become an inhuman force and a frightful overlord, ultimately depriving all ethics and morality of meaning.
But put more precisely, this is a question regarding what human values are. For better or for worse, in the future people will be implanted in the crystalline structure of a screen, and all possibilities regarding life, thought and human sustainability will converge. Under the azure sky, humanity lives suspended between delight and discomfort, especially in this moment of hyper-stimulation and utter darkness. Whether humankind will ultimately overcome or surrender to the challenge of the digital revolution, we have no fixed conclusion. Should we embrace the many delights and discomforts that technology gives to human activity? This exhibition seeks to bring together artists from Taiwan and Korea to join hands in exploring the answers. In terms of both media and subject matter, this exhibition cleaves close to one reality: perhaps art manifests the truth. This truth, like the world itself, is full of crises, but also opportunities for transformation. They impact our old values, morals and cultural perspectives, and directly engage us in debate and battle.
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[1] Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014)
[2] Mou Zongsan, A Rational Analysis of Zhuangzi’s “On the Uniformity of All Things,” ed. Tao Kwok Cheung (Taipei: Bookman, 1999), p. 25 (Chinese language)
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Life in Between Delight and Discomfort
2016 Gwangju Biennale Celebration Korean & Taiwanese Contemporary Art
Date: August 22 - November 13, 2016
Opening: August 31
Venue: Gwangju Museum of Art
Co-Curator: Lim Jong-Young, Jo Hsiao
Artists：
Wu Chuan-Lun, LuxuryLogico (The Artisit Collective), Chang Chia-Ying, Yu Cheng-Ta, Hsieh Chieh-Hua+Tung I-Fen, Wang Chung-Kun, Chu Teh-I
Gim Gwang-Cheol, Kim Ki-Chul, Kim Myeong-Beom, Na Hyun, Park Sang-Hwa, Seong Tae-Hun, Shin Ho-Yoon, Yang Na-Hee |
