The chemistry between the poetic wisdom of science and art creates a unique atmosphere in the world where academic boundaries are blurred today. A lot of innovators—combining society and nature, science and sensibility, and imagination and reality—creates groundbreaking experience of knowledge and aesthetics beyond the confines of disciplines and correlates issues of contemporary core values. The National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabs), affiliated to the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), hosts the international exchange exhibition “Convergence: Artistic Explorations from Nature to Society” at the first-floor hall of the Technology Building, Taipei City, as of May 10, allowing the public to appreciate the unique fusion of technology and art and realize how art becomes a medium that redefines scientific exploration and how it acts as a catalyst for interdisciplinary innovation.
According to Minn-Tsong Lin, Deputy Minister of NSTC, NSTC has long been committed to promoting innovation of scientific techniques and achieving cross-collaboration between technology and other fields. In the field of art, creative works by virtue of humans’ encounters with technology are widely discussed in a lot of activities. By inviting interdisciplinary innovators at home and abroad and working in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and RIXC (a center for new media culture in Latvia), the exhibition, which shows how technology and art mingle, conflict, and re-form, and fires humans’ imagination and innovation for the future, is illuminating and fascinating. He expects through the exhibition, Taiwan can show to the world that the combination of technology and art can not only creates new experiences of knowledge and aesthetics, but it can even make us explore the issues we express concerns over in our daily lives from different “perspectives.” NSTC hopes that the exhibition can help create more possibilities by means of mutual conversation among technology, art, and humanity.
Bou-Wen Lin, Vice President of NARLabs, said that the mission of NARLabs focuses primarily on the development of technology and talent nurturing. Utterly different from technology as it is, art, like technology, is instrumental in raising people’s quality of life. If both can mingle, conflict, and reciprocate, for example in a way that art demonstrates the beauty of technology and technology reinforces the way art is presented, a refreshing experience of knowledge and aesthetics will be created, providing a completely different angle of perception and appreciation for those who visit the exhibition.
The international exchange exhibition “Convergence: Artistic Explorations from Nature to Society” was curated by Po-Hao Chi, founder of Zone Sound Creative, and Kuang-Chi Hung, Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, National Taiwan University, who works as the counselor. The three-month exhibition is divided into four sections:
- Cosmic Symbiosis—the multidimensional dependence between technology and the universe:
Humans’ sensibility is metaphorically transported to the vast space between the Earth and the universe. When private space travel and satellite communications services have been phased in, there are alternative perspectives on the space industry and humans’ central values. Here, the public will get to know how research is safely and securely conducted under extreme circumstances and can catch a glimpse of technologically applied space simulators. Through a microbe’s-eye sight, they can contact and converse with untypical space stakeholders.
- Sensorial Empowerment—the re-forming of environmental perception by means of technology:
What is exhibited here is how artists re-form our established perception of the world, the physical experience, and the natural environment. The dimension of perception that transcends material aspects can be appreciated here, and so can how technology and art mingle and manifest the connection and interaction among humanity, nature, and society.
- Interwoven Networks—the complex relationship between technology and society:
How technology forms interpersonal relationships, working conditions, and social structures is explored from different perspectives. How technology mediates among people. The blockchain technology is utilized to question and re-conceptualize the connection between property and the state, and expose the intricate network between society and ecology hidden behind the advancement of technology.
- Art-Science Synergy—the interdisciplinary innovation borders:
The power of combining art and science to explore uncharted territories is prominently emphasized. Here, the origin of artists’ interdisciplinary cooperation in the fields of science and engineering is shown to the public.
In addition to the exhibition itself, the Coevolution Research Assembly assists in holding eight public activities in diverse forms during the three months, including a music video screening event with a pre-show introduction, a documentary screening event, artist workshops, online roundtable forums, etc., all of which allows the public to deeply appreciate the fusion of technology and art. Moreover, Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits, artists from RIXC, Latvia, will show up on the scene and share their insights after years of their creation in the fields of art and technology, ecological art, and renewable energy.
The artists/team involved in the international exchange exhibition “Convergence: Artistic Explorations from Nature to Society” are Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits, Nicole L’Huillier, Patricia Dominguez, Aarti Sunder, Marisa Morán Jahn, Tzu-Tung Lee, Winnie Soon, Yu-Chun Lo, Maggie Coblentz. The organizations involved are Lythologies, the MIT Media Lab, the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA), and the Coevolution Research Assembly.
Through the exhibition, NARLabs is looking forward to pooling the ideas of the innovators and researchers at home and abroad, connecting past and future as well as theory and practice on the strength of the sensory fusion and reciprocation between the scientific method and the creation of art, inviting the public to take a close look at how technology in modern life is redefined and understood, and witnessing a future of interdisciplinary cooperation in a collective, clever, and critical way.
“Convergence: Artistic Explorations from Nature to Society”
Date: 10 May 2024 - 10 August 2024
Time: Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm (except national holidays)
Venue: The hall of the Technology Building
Address: 1F., No. 106, Sec. 2, Heping E. Rd., Da’an Dist., Taipei City
