Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Dark Beyond Deep by Zhu Changquan the film presents the process of how consciousness gradually develops and extends from the real world to virtual space through a raven named Cyma. Cyma redefined things in the “digital garden” in the film by comparing them with the logic in reality. It opened a new passage for mutual reflection between objects in real life and the existence of digital objects in digital space.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The final work in the Marshal Tie Jia series (of which Turtle Island is in the KADIST collection), Spirit Writing features the Marshal in conversation with Chia-Wei Hsu, by way of a ritual involving the Marshal’s divination chair. Marshal Tie Jia is a frog god, who was born in a pond in Jiangxi, China, before fleeing to Matsu Island off the coast of Taiwan during the Cultural Revolution after his temple was destroyed. Spirit Writing attempts to reconstruct the original temple using 3D modeling software, operated in real time as Hsu asks the Marshal questions, receiving answers through a divination ritual in which the chair is swung violently around by his acolytes.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Jeamin Cha’s essay-film Ellie’s Eye is an extensive examination of the human mind and the effects of new technology, such as chatbots and virtual avatar therapists on the mental health industry. One such avatar, named Ellie, was developed by the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies. Ellie has the ability to interpret the user’s emotions through data collected from their speech and physical gestures to indicate psychological distress on a micro-level, which would be imperceptible by a human therapist.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Wolowiec’s textile work Not This Time (2015) translates pixelated images into sensuous fabric and ink based forms that are at once beautiful in their abstraction and anxiety-ridden in their visualization of a malfunctioning digital world. In order to produce this work, Wolowiec selects a grouping of digital images from web-based sources that have a glitch, an aberration in which a short-lived technical fault results in distortions in an image’s display. Through a dye sublimination ink process, the images are printed onto strands of thread pixel by pixel, which the artist then weaves into a final work.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

ÆTHER (Poor Objects) by Li Shuang builds on the artist’s consideration of the interplay between physical and digital spaces. Through a kaleidoscopic video collage, Li examines the complexities of personal subjectivity within an increasingly immersive and omnipresent online culture. Among disparate imagery that includes extra-terrestrial simulations, dizzying hordes of birds, animated figures trapped in dystopian virtual spaces, and real-life abandoned places, the video references the Chinese creation myth of Nuwa, a goddess who uses her own body to repair the sky.