Perfectly identical reproductions and nearly instantaneous transmission of information are domineering aspects of our lifestyles in the “digital” age. Since digital speed approaches the speed of light, it endlessly draws in people’s sight, hearing, and thinking throughout the course of a regular day. This sense of chaos and multiplicity that deprives us of the ability to think and experience, and was accurately predicted by Walter Benjamin. His prediction of the disappearance of “aura” has been realized by the advent of the digital age. When difference is overwhelmed by digitalization, the authenticity in aura is lost completely. Before the digital age, “analog” was seen as the last warmth of aura and the only mark of authenticity in technology. When the body cannot keep up with this digital speed, “a return to analog” represents the longing for a slower pace of life.
The Return of Analog Poetry is reminiscent of the sense of depth inherent in the age of slower, simpler technology, and represents an attempt to seek the last remaining aura that was lost after in the onset of the industrial revolution and arrival of the digital age. Our faster paced lifestyles resulting from digitalization have led to an explosion of consciousness and the generation of enormous information resources. Owing to the far and wide reach of digital telecommunications and the Internet, mobile networks have formed various bodies without organs that bind and connect the spirit of humanity. In the age of instantly accessible information, “forgetfulness” becomes a lifestyle trait for people to deal with large amounts of information. When the mind indulges in the stimulation of information and media, the body loses its sense of time. Life is too fast. Memories are too few.This exhibition aims at retrieving the warmth lost in digitalization by presenting three topics centered on the relationship between the digital and analog: “The Marks of Sound,” “The Poetry of Pixels,” and “The Retransmission of Information.”
In “The Marks of Sound” we investigate how digital sampling filters out noises and produces perfect digital sounds. These sounds, however, have lost the “marks” left at the time of the recording, and with them a sense of the machine that did the recording. With that premise in mind, these exhibits attempt to find imperfections in perfect digitalization.“beTube - 3set” by Wang Chung-Kun adopts a traditional instrument, the pan flute, as the inspirational medium, which the artist then controls through digital means to induce a physical flow of air through the instrument to produce different scales, thereby creating a “precise imperfectness.” In “Sound Bulb” and “Sound Dots,” Wang Fujui uses analog resonance and an overlapping of nearly one hundred sounds to combine digital and analog senses of time. In his project “Music,” Chu ChunTeng films a person listening to and singing “Music” by Madonna. By simulating analog methods, this work discusses what “music” is.
“The Poetry of Pixels” recovers the low-resolution memories of childhood. In our memories, pixels are beautiful. This is seen in “Measuring the Distance between the Self and Other,” where Chen I-Chun uses “Super Mario Bros.” (a video game from the 8-bit age) as the material, lightheartedly virtualizing issues of globalization into analog adventures. Lastly, Cheng Hsien-Yu discusses a serious topic in an interesting way by transforming the real life-cycles of mosquitoes into video game levels in “After Life ver.2.0.”
In “The Retransmission of Information” artists deconstruct information to discuss information’s active nature, its form, and what “information” is. Lo Shih-Tung moves media into bottles—a reworking of the old “message in a bottle” concept. In his “Media Globe,” Lo asks the question, “when a message is loaded in a bottle and set afloat on the ocean, is the content of the bottle—even when it is empty—always considered information?” Cheng Hsien-Yu installs 88 computer mice on a single computer in his “Mice_House”Each mouse is able to control the computer as well as receive and deliver information. However, the question is, “who controls the real information?” Tseng Yu-Chuan materializes Google information through a computer program in her two projects “Delicious” and “Xandora Spring.” Viewers can watch the formation of information instantaneously while still retaining an unfamiliar uncertainty about the process.
A return to analog signifies a return to an age when the body still retained the ability to sense. This poetic idea is contingent not on the pursuit of a return to analog techniques, but rather the analog age in which people still retained their physical sense within technology, and from which one may seek the warmth in science and profound memories shared by other viewers.
Artists: Wang Chung-Kun, Wang Fujui, Chu ChunTeng, Tseng Yu-Chuan, Chen I-Chun,
Cheng Hsien-Yu, Lo Shih-Tung
*image (left)
© Wang Fujui
courtesy of the artist and MOT/ARTS
