How we perceive the surrounding world depends upon the domain of "time" and "space." Space decides the location, while time – which seems to be a ubiquitous concept – points to an unchangeable direction from the past toward the future. Life followed the circle of “light.” In fact, life can be considered as something “woven by light with air,” as how the 19th Century physiologist Jacob Molechit describes photosynthesis. As one of the main elements which construct the world, the “time axis” of light puts everything in order and makes “space” recognizable out of the chaotic darkness.
Nowadays, one hundred years after Albert Einstein published The General Theory of Relativity, we still have not reached the world where time travel is made real. The fantasy described in science fiction movies is still no more than an impossible dream. However, owing to the invention of camera which captures the “frames” based upon the optical theories and the storage technique, the “moment” taking place in a certain space and time can finally be recorded and reproduced as photos. Photos help to prove that something “has been there.” The idea of “that-has-been” is adopted by Roland Barthes to describe the nature of the photographed – it has been there but it is now disappeared.
Through painting, we attempt to recreate the present moment (or the moment which has just past) by transforming the scenery into a substantial object which will last longer than our memory does. In the digital age, the media carrying the images are no longer limited to the layers of paints on canvas or the chemical changes taking place on photographic papers. Nowadays, these images are transcoded and stored as digital signals. Then, they are projected in the form of light onto the screen, an object we are so familiar with in our daily life. As a light-emitting device, screen replaces paper/print to carry images and to transmit information. Therefore, the daily scenes, either to be reproduced or recreated, is now encoded and then transcoded to become a video clip which can be repetitively used.
On the one hand, images help demonstrate the endless continuity of time; on the other hand, it reverses the linear narrative of space and time, bringing the “text” which has been previously stored back to life. The images are retrieved, transcoded, and re-presented as daily scenes. The past being stored is thus given a chance to have a non-stop conversation with the present, as the narratives which take place in different space-time backgrounds encounter each other to reproduce the dialogue.
In the exhibition A Dialogue with the Space and Time, we attempt to provide a discussion about the storage and the re-presentation of images. Meanwhile, we invite artists to reconstruct the concepts of the artworks as a response to the exhibition space of Digiark. Artists, from both Taiwan and overseas, who are interested in the subjects all gather here to re-create their own conversation with Digiark – a dialogue which is beyond space and time.
Curators: LUO He-Lin, LIN Wang-Tin, WU Shang-Lin, CHEN I-Chun
