Tao Ya-Lun participating in "Customized Reality: the Lure and Enchantment of Digital Art" at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art 

Artist News

When entering modern society, we transform traditional social life with technical methods, disenchanting those illusion generated from mythology and religion since pre-historic period. German sociologist and philosopher, Max Weber described the irrationalized mentality, which tends to consider those mysterious phenomenon as part of life, as “the world remains a great enchanted garden.” Facing the sense of disenchantment within modernity, artists also follow the contemporary current and make use of digital technology to interpret those unseen illusion, dream and fantasy through the process of data visualization. However, in the spectacle era when visuality takes full control, artists sophisticatedly manage the interactivity of digital media and the aim to create virtual space with imagery, grafting virtual limbs to the viewers’ bodies. In this sense, artists take visuality as the extension of human’s mind, perception and body, and further enable the viewers to gain real perception. Baudrillard declared that our time has achieved the state of “hyperreal,”and the artistic practice of new media is exactly the way to reveal the reality and exceed the reality; it further simulates a kind of spatial reality with a new reality.

This exhibition takes a peek at the disenchanting ritual during the process of artistic creation of new media, leading viewers to step into the time and space simulated by artists to experience the new perception after their mind being extended. The aim of the exhibition is to tell apart virtual and real senses and to question the so-called “reality” within this context. New media artists try to achieve the state of disenchantment; yet, as enchanting the society, they twist the way we comprehend the world with a new reality.

Artists:
Lin Pei-Ying, Hu Ching-Chuan, Yuan Goang-Ming, Zhang Xu-Zhan, Chang Huei-Ming, Hsu Chia-Wei, Tao Ya-Lun, Lu Yang, Liao Chi-Yu, Liu Yu, Hiraki Sawa
Interdisciplinary Performance: NAXS Corp., wangsueya
Curators: Kuan Yen-Ting, Lai Shin-Yu