Month: Saturday July 4th, 2015

TAI CHI

kinetic video installation, 2014 

Artist: Hu Jieming
Materials: projectors, motors, mechanical drives, sensors, fiberglass, aluminium
Size: 8m x 3.7m x4.2m (H)

Tai Chi is presented as part of Jeffrey Shaw and Hu Jieming Twofold Exhibion. It will be shown at Chronus Art Center from 26th Sep to 28th Nov. Tai Chi will be both a review and an extension in the artists's journey of historical reflection.

Tai Chi is a mixed media work that combines images with mechanical apparatuses, in an installation with the nature of an organism.This device like a creature is made up of more than 220 human bone-like structures, which are scaled up in size. The creature is free to slowly walk around the exhibition hall under the control of an automatic system. Sensors, which detect specific points in the space, control the trajectory of the installation. 108 projectors projecting images from the past and present are installed inside the bones of the creature. These images have been processed and changed subjectively, just as historical materials that enter our memories. After being ‘filtered’ in this way, these images are played back from the bones, and form a narrative relationship with the slow movement of the creature. In this way a particular realm of vision is generated within the space.

The inspiration for Tai Chi relates to the extent to which a reality that exists through memories and an actual reality relate to each other. Through memories, we can readily approach reality in the form of political allegories, and in this way enter a particular ideological narrative system. From the perspective of the use and presentation of materials, Tai Chi forms the basis of an experiment in how more effectively to transform a gravitational attraction implied by the work into a boundless imagination. For the audience, the physical presence of the work, the power implied in the slowly moving bones and motors, and the large quantity of virtual image fragments of the videos interact with each other and result in an integrated sense of the piece – this is the most straightforward context that Tai Chi brings. Given this situation, will we become the objects produced by Tai Chi, as we have already been affected by the power of it?

About Artist:
As one of the foremost pioneers of new media art in China, Hu started to experiment with new technologies in his works in the 1980s. Constantly concerned with subjects such as time, human history, and cultural memory, Hu intended to illuminate the boundaries between the ‘passing-by’ and the ‘going-on’ and by doing so he set viewers free from the chronological way of seeing historical events, onto a more accidental reconstruction. His works are widely exhibited at Power Station of Art , Shanghai; Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; V2 Institute for the Unstable Media, Netherlands; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; MoMA PS1; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; V&A Museum, London; Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun, amongst many other venues.

OVERTURE-TAIJI

2014

Hu Jieming

As the first half of this solo show, the projected images of  Overture are embedded in the crevices and fissures of the walls on three sides of the exhibition venue. The audience must move their bodies to make the gesture of peeping through these frames, where they they can find that t he subjec t in mos t of t he images revolves around human body, and is juxtaposed with some others depicted on historical events. The dim rays of light from the fissures surrounds the audiences, the artist referring to it as “the aura of Tai Chi, ” which provides  an immersive environment in which to rethink the enigmatic relationship between image, truth, and narrative. The earliest description of imager y of this kind appeared in Book VII of Pl ato’s Republic, where the renowned thinker proposed that the shadows that the occupants of a cave see are eceptive; the truth lies outside the cave and is brought back from there by a narrator who—needless to say—can never generate a completely persuasive depiction of that truth. Hu Jieming’s Over ture unset tles the relationship between spectacle and  falsehood, thus providing with a fulcrum for intellectual contemplation through these hundreds of moving images.

“These 800 or so clips are but fragments waiting for a storyline; or, rather, they are a set of subterfuges, of the visually miscellaneous kind; that of scattered debris cast down into oblivion.”—Hu Jieming on his production of Overture

Granted that, if all physical encounters, or even impacts between individuals were to be removed, would the time that proves their existence fail to be remembered? In turn, it is the events caused by those encounters that making particular moment perceptible, and it is due to an accumulation of these points in time that later observers come to believe that such a stream of events is a linear progression, concluding that it is the product of history. Holding such a point of view, it can be seen that in Hu Jieming’s solo show Overture—Tai Chi massive amounts of close-up clips capture unremarked daily activity; through post-production and installation, the collection and the presentation of these numerous visual elements consolidates such a relationship between individual time and shared history.

Hu’s use of the video installation as a means to exhibit his visual database has gradually became a core aspect of his recent artistic practice; its materials, though focusing on different topics in each series, consistently hint at collective memories—something which is still present in this latest production. However, many of the clips, amongst a massive quantity, in Overture—Tai Chi were shot as close-up sequences, retain a touch of Hu’s early vocabulary (since submerged in his recent works) consisting of a playful, seemingly trivial and mundane temperament.

As a multitude of preliminary units, the meanings of these moments of encounter are yet to be specified, thus they seem of no importance. However, their accumulation acts as a subtle artistic reminder that individual desire is a basic component of a collective narrative.

The exhibition is taking place as two consecutive projects: Overture in the first half, and Tai Chi in the second. Both projects make use of video clips incorporated into the surfaces of each installation: the old stone walls of the installation space, and the skeletal frame of the piece itself.For Hu Jieming, the walls in Overture and and skeleton, or “body” according to the artist, in Tai Chi are dominant metaphors for contemporary Chinese art and history—walls suggest bordercrossing practices, encompassing the last 30 years of contemporary art, while the image of body and skeleton are alternately accentuated throughout the development of the new China.These two installations have been provided with certain environments to frame those digital wreckages. Spectators may, in turn, compare these contextualized fragments with their own scattered debris of memories, and relate them to Hu Jieming’s visual narrative.

                                                                                                                                       Zian Chen

THE INFINITE LINE

2014

Sarah Kenderdine, Jeffrey Shaw,Edwin Nadason Thumboo

In the tradition of the ‘workshop of potential literature', or Oulipo, this interactive installation gives visitors the opportunity to recombine the poetic ensemble of Edwin Thumboo. Twenty seven seminal poems are redefined as poly-vocal readings, which de- and reconstruct his original oeuvre into renewed vectors of meaning.

Using a 360-degree 3D theatre, visitors engage with 27 life-size video recitals by Thumboo.Computational techniques allow for a matrix of individual lines of poetry to be re-assembled in a ‘live’ re-reading of key texts. The resulting assemblages offer new optics and an infinite number of interpretations of the poems and, the man. The Infinite Line proposes new modes of spectatorship in the performance of poetry.

Sarah Kenderdine ( AU) researches at the forefront of i nteractive and i mmersive experiences for museums and galleries. In widely exhibited installation works, she has amalgamated cultural heritage with new media art practice, especially in the realms of interactive cinema, augmented reality and embodied narrative. She is a pioneer in panoramic and stereoscopic display systems and content creation. Sarah oncurrently holds the position of Professor, National Institute for Experimental Arts (NIEA), COFA, University of New South Wales and Special Projects, Museum Victoria, Australia (2003—). She is founding Director of Research at the Applied Laboratory for Interactive Visualization and Embodiment (ALiVE), City University of Hong Kong (2010-2013) where she founded the LUXLAB.

Edwin Nadason Thumboo (SG), Emeritus Professor at National University of Singapore's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, is widely regarded as the unofficial poet laureate of Singapore. He is best known for writing on national issues. His poem, Ulysses
by the Merlion, is a major work in Singapore literature. He was the first Singaporean to be conferred the SEA Write Award and the Cultural Medallion for Literature in 1979 and 1980 respectively.

Jeffrey Shaw (b. 1944) has been a leading figure in new media art since the 1960's. In a prolific body of internationally exhibited and acclaimed works, he has pioneered and set benchmarks for the creative use of digital media in the fields of expanded cinema, virtual and augmented reality, immersive visualization and interactive narrative. Shaw was co-founder of the Eventstructure Research Group in Amsterdam (1969-1979), and founding director of the ZKM Institute for Visual Media Karlsruhe (1991-2002). In 2003 he co-founded and directed the UNSW iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research in Sydney, and in 2009 Shaw was appointed Chair Professor of Media Art and Dean of the School of Creative Media at City University in Hong Kong, where he is also Director of the ACIM and ALiVE research centres. In 2014 Shaw was appointed Visiting Professor at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London.

SCENARIO
2010
Dennis Del Favero with Stephen Sewell and Maurice Pagnucco

SCENARIO is a 360-degree 3D cinematic installation whose narrative is interactively produced by the audience and humanoid characters with artificial intelligence (AI). It is inspired by the experimental television work of Samuel Beckett. A female humanoid character has been imprisoned in a concealed basement, along with her four children by her father, who lives above ground with his daytime family. Set within this underground labyrinth, she and her children take the audience through various basement spaces in an attempt to discover the possible ways they and the audience can resolve the mystery of their imprisonment and so effect an escape before certain death.

Dennis Del Favero (AU) is an ARC Australian Professorial Fellow and artist. His work has been widely exhibited in solo exhibitions in leading museums and galleries. He is Director of the iCinema Research Centre and Deputy-Director of the National Institute for Experimental Arts at UNSW, Visiting Professorial Fellow at ZKM, Germany, Visiting Professor at University IUAV of Venice, Italy, Visiting Professor at City University of Hong Kong, Visiting Professor at the Academy of Art, Vienna and editor of Digital Arts Edition published by Hatje Cantz,Germany.

 more info

THERE IS STILL TIME .. BROTHER
2007/2008
The Wooster Group,Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte,Developed with Jeffrey Shaw

THERE IS STILL TIME .. BROTHER  was commissioned by the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA. EMPAC supported the showing of the work at Chronus Art Center.

Synopsis

Part I             10 minutes

Lionel (host): “Can you tell that’s New York?”

Lionel explains the nature of interactive 360o cinema.

Moira smokes a cigarette and stares at her video blog.

Tanner tells the story of Ft. Calypso around a campfire.

Part II            4 minutes

Tanner (Captain): “It’s a pitch black night. With a light sun rising.”

Lionel explains interactive 360o cinema again and plays a song.

Moira responds to questions from her bloggers.

Tanner leads the attack against Ft. Calypso.

Part III          5 minutes

Moira (blogger): “You keep talking about dead soldiers.”

Lionel demonstrates the 360o cinema by moving 180o around the circle and leaves.

Moira defends her position on the war and says goodbye to Lionel.

Tanner salutes the fallen soldiers and watches the end of the film.

This interactive installation — which takes its title from a banner visible in the final scene of Stanley Kramer’s 1959 film, On the Beach, depicting a post-nuclear apocalypse Earth — is a film about war and the ways that individuals respond to war. The installation offers the viewer control of a narrative displayed within a 360-degree video panorama. Seated in a revolving chair in the center of the space, audience members take turns controlling a virtual “window” to highlight discrete aspects of a story about British and French troops battling for control of Fort Calypso (a battle site in the French and Indian War) and a space where grotesquely enlarged children’s toys vie for attention with politically minded bloggers and unsavory YouTube videos. All the while, a mercurial host attempts to articulate the implications of this unique “narrative space." With each viewing, a new cinematic experience is spun out of the choices of individual audience members.

The Wooster Group (US) is an ensemble of artists who make new work for the theatre, dance and media. Under the direction of Elizabeth LeCompte and with its associates and staff, the Group has created over 40 pieces since its founding in 1976. The Group has cultivated new forms and techniques of theatrical expression reflective of and responsive to our evolving culture.
www.thewoostergroup.org

Elizabeth LeCompte (US) is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group.Since 1975 she has constructed—choreographed, designed, and directed—all of the Group’s productions, including nineteen theater pieces, five dance pieces, and nine works for film and video. LeCompte has received numerous awards and honorary doctorates from the New
School and California Institute of the Arts.

40+4, ART IS NOT ENOUGH! NOT ENOUGH!

2008 / 2013

Davide Quadrio, Lothar Spree,Zhu Xiaowen, ArtHub

This project is a series of videotaped interviews, by Davide Quadrio, Lothar Spree and Zhu Xiaowen, in cooperation with Xu Jie, with some forty Shanghai-based artists, dealing not with artwork per se, but rather with how artists themselves perceive their activity, their role and position in a changing, post-conventional society. It seeks to “map out” some of the contours of the city’s artistic imagination, providing a cartography of the force fields of its subjectivities. And above and beyond an unsparingly critical, and at times partisan analysis of artistic imaginaries, it provides a heuristic focus on the urban subjectivities of one of the contemporary world’s most intense urban experiments—Shanghai.

Interviewed Artists
Ding Yi, Gong Yan, Gu Wenda, Hu Jieming, Huang Kui, Huang Yuanqing, Jin Feng, Li Shan, Li Xiangyang, Li Lei, Liang Yue, Liu Dahong, Liu Jianhua, Lu Chunsheng, Luo Yongjin, Pu Jie, Qiu Anxiong, Qiu Deshu, Shen Fan, Shi Yong, Song Haidong, Song Tao, Tang Maohong, Wang Nanming, Wang Tiande, Wang Xingwei, Xiang Liqing, Xu Longbao, Xu Zhen, Xue Song, Yang Fudong, Yang Hui，Yang Zhenzhong, Yu Xiaofu, Yu Youhan, Zhang Ding, Zhang Enli, Zhang Haitian, Zhang Peicheng, Zhou Tiehai, Zhu Julan

Davide Quadrio (IT) is a China based producer and curator. He founded and directed for a decade the first not for profit independent creative lab in Shanghai, Bizart Art Center, as a platform to foster the local contemporary art scene. In 2007 Quadrio created ArtHub Asia, a production and curatorial proxy active in Asia and worldwide. He is currently hosted by Shanghai Visual Art Institute, Fudan University, and he is part of the Scientific Committee of PAC, Pavilion of Contemporary Art of Milan as well as Artistic Director of Scene 44 in Marseille.

Lothar Spree (DE, 1942–2013) studied film at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm with Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz and Detten Schleiermacher. He was professor for Media Art / Film at the ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe. In 2003, he set up the Film Department at the newly established College of Communication & Art at Tongji University, Shanghai. In 2009 he became professor for Digital Media Design at the newly founded College of Design & Innovation at the College of Architecture & Urban Planning at Tongji University.

Zhu Xiaowen (CN) is a media artist, scholar and curator. Described as a visual poet,social critic, and aesthetic researcher, she uses video, photography, performance, installation and mixed media as platforms to communicate the complicated experience of being an international and to wrestle with the notion of a disembodied identity. Her questions are often raised from her observation and reflection as a critical thinker and an active communicator. Zhu is currently based in Los Angeles, USA.

UTOPIA TRIUMPHANS

2002
Bernd Lintermann, Jeffrey Shaw

This interactive 3D computer graphic installation provides an evolving and elucidating visualization of the polyphonic music of the enaissance. Custom software randomly selects from a vocabulary of architectonic forms that are added, removed and transfigured to create the art work’s dynamically developing visual compositions. With a choice of five conographic frameworks to select from, these metaphoric and synaesthetic structures reach out to engage the viewer as they unfold in a seemingly oganic manner.

Bernd Lintermann (DE) works as artist and scientist in the field of real time computer graphics with a strong focus on interactive and generative systems. The results of his research are applied in the scientific, creative and commercial context. He worked with internationally renowned artists, like Jeffrey Shaw, Bill Viola, Peter Weibel and the Wooster Group, and created works for various display environments like the CAVE TM, the EVE Dome and panoramic projection environments. He is  presently  engaged in the development of Augmented Reality for mobile end devices to provide access to digital contents in a public environment.
www.bernd-lintermann.de

ALLUVIUM

2010 - 2012

Ulf Langheinrich

ALLUVIUM is a digitally generated sonic and visual landscape that Ulf Langheinrich describes as a resonating matrix of aesthetic matter. In ALLUVIUM, contexts, social settings and meanings are of no interest; Langheinrich’s focus is the aesthetic potential of media machines – software and hardware: the contradiction between the promise of the perfect illusion and the limits of a specific display apparatus. The friction between the desire for the absolute and the failures of hardware reveals the true nature of media set ups. In exploring the limitations lies the potential; the failure is the truth.

MUSIC II

2013–2014

Ulf Langheinrich

MUSIC II is based on a stereoscopic recording of a bleak land in a "Stalker"–like (as in the movie by Andrei Tarkovski) nowhere zone. Various algorithms altering the time-image relation create a density and uniformity that leaves the originally captured “reality” behind.

MOVEMENT Z

2012–2014

Ulf Langheinrich

Based upon the almost involuntary, rapid movements of the Chinese dancer Maureen Law,MOVEMENT Z is a m editation about time a nd b ody, a slow flow, almost stillness, in deep black and deep red.

Ulf Langheinrich (DE). In 1991, he and Kurt Hentschl?ger founded the media art duet Granular Synthesis and have realised for more than a decade a number of international large scale projects. Since 2003, Ulf Langheinrich has started to realise various large-scale solo projects. He was guest professor at HGB University for Graphics and Book Design Leipzig (Germany), guest artist and lecturer of Audiovisual Design at FH Salzburg (Austria), at RMIT University in Melbourne (Australia) and at China Academy of Art in Hangzhou (China), and guest artist and professor at Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing (France), and visiting assistant professor at School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.