A New Era for Contemporary New Media Art
Lecture poster from the Department of Arts and Visual Design, National Taipei University of Education
Dream Factory – Multimedia Audio-Visual Digital Art Show "Atelier des Lumières" is dedicated to great painters in art history. The opening featured two representative artists of the late 19th-century Vienna Secession: Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) and Egon Schiele (1890–1918).
The current booming development of cross-disciplinary digital art keeps pace with computer programming, technology, and artificial intelligence, leading the forefront of tech art. By exploring unknown new realms in virtual worlds, it attempts to create various possibilities for art. The Japanese creative team TeamLab’s special exhibition teamLab: Beyond Boundaries is a clear example. Founded in 2001, this creative team comprises over 400 members including artists, programmers, engineers, 3D animators, mathematicians, and architects. This immersive interactive installation, bridging art, science, technology, and creativity, pushes exhibitions to their limits.
The Japanese creative team TeamLab’s special exhibition teamLab: Beyond Boundaries is a clear example. Founded in 2001, this creative team comprises over 400 members including artists, programmers, engineers, 3D animators, mathematicians, and architects. This immersive interactive installation, bridging art, science, technology, and creativity, pushes exhibitions to their limits.
2018 Grand Palais Paris "Artists & Robots" thematic exhibition
2018 "Artists & Robots" thematic exhibition
Miguel Chevalier's interactive installation work at the 2018 Arab Music Exhibition at the Philharmonie de Paris
Miguel Chevalier at the 2018 "Artists & Robots" thematic exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris
Ryoji Ikeda continuum, solo exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2018
Ryoji Ikeda continuum, solo exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2018
Italian artist Roberto Pugliese Equilibrium Variant Sonore, 2012
Italian artist Roberto Pugliese Aritmetiche Architetture Sonore, 2012
By Chen Chi-Hsiang
"Digital technology combined with art is narrowing the distance between humans and art. What changes does new technology bring to the development of contemporary art?"
Fumio Nanjo, Director of Mori Art Museum
Marcel Duchamp believed early on that new media would renew art, stating: "Artists have new materials, new colors, new lighting methods. The modern world has replaced the old, even painting itself. The new world forces everything to change naturally and normally." Art should also make good use of new materials, new expression methods, and new themes, which is precisely the current process of new art. (This text comes from Li Chang-jun's Facebook post, 2019-03-21.) In this era of cross-cultural and information media, with the rapid advancements of digital technology, 3D, and the current trend of artificial intelligence, digital art or new media art has recently sparked an unprecedented artistic revolution. It brings an unprecedented shock to optimistic humanity today, thoroughly changing people's lives, horizons, senses, and conditions of existence. It brings new vitality and energy to art, offering infinite impact and new prospects for contemporary artistic creation, while liberating the realms of democratization and popularization of art, interactive experiences, and infinite horizons, allowing more people to wander, explore, and discover, delving into its mysterious power and beauty. It also makes people rethink the connection between existing artistic values and social systems. Digital technology brings an unprecedented new driving force for art; art, like a runaway horse, undergoes continuous transformation with the rapid progress of new technology. Especially with today's complex and diverse forms of art, audio-visual media, and spatial environments, it has developed extraordinary net art and various types of digital art. With boundless imagination, it creates panoramic interactive media art or virtual reality worlds, profoundly changing people's horizons for viewing the world. It develops unrestrained emotions, new experiences, and desires, opening a new era of art.
The all-encompassing nature of digital technology art liberates the boundaries of art, changing appreciation, collecting, and horizons, breaking spatial dimensions, and altering the relationship between works and audiences. As viewers immerse themselves in the work and walk through the space, they can merge with the work, even becoming part of it. "Interaction," "transformation," and "experience" are key to this cross-boundary fusion, bringing overwhelming materialization and sensory engagement, combining dramatic and entertainment elements with participatory influence. For example, in March 2018, Paris established the Dream Factory – Multimedia Audio-Visual Digital Art Show "Atelier des Lumières." Last June, Tokyo opened the first giant "teamLab Borderless" digital art museum. By exploring unknown new realms in virtual worlds, it attempts to create various possibilities for art. (TeamLab is a pioneer in giant-scale digital tech art, founded in 2001 as a Japanese artistic team gathered from professionals across disciplines, aiming to fuse art, science, technology, design, and nature through collaborative creation. Team members include artists, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects. TeamLab seeks to explore new relationships between humans and nature through art, and to liberate art from the boundaries between matter and art through digital technology.)
The collision of technology and art unleashes infinite desires through the charm of digital and new tech, sparking an unprecedented situation. Through insights into new tech and natural phenomena, within landscapes created by audio-visual, light, and kinetic environments, there is an intent to expand and investigate infinite possibilities from new tech, redefining new forms of art: such as Net Art, Interactive Art, Post-Internet Art. An example is the 2015 Paris Municipal Modern Art Museum exhibition "Co-workers: The Network as an Artist," which presented new forms of art. To emerging Virtual Reality Art, such as digital artist Miguel Chevalier's environmental spatial installations. Or the exploration of virtual-reality via new tech, attempting to develop new sensory, audio-visual, and bodily experiences, such as Spanish artist Pablo Valbuena's exploration of audio-visual and flowing light.
The cross-boundary integration of science and art becomes an all-encompassing realm. Artificial intelligence's reconstructive and constructive nature, along with numerous new-tech objects—sculptures and established spatial or dramatic environmental installations—prompt viewers to reflect on the relationship between humans, nature, and technology. Examples include Wang Yanghui's exploration at Moli International Culture Experimental Company, or new tech art rising stars like Liu Chenxiu, who combines artists, scientists, engineers, and designers into a cross-disciplinary island team.
Construction of new tech, new materials, and new scenes; expansion of behavior-concept-material and spatial fields; interactive participation and cross-boundary construction; materialization and sensory engagement; entertainment and dramatization.
(Lecture by the Department of Arts and Visual Design, National Taipei University of Education) Using several Paris exhibitions as examples:
- Dream Factory – Multimedia Audio-Visual Digital Art Show (Atelier des Lumières).
- Japanese TeamLab teamLab: Beyond Boundaries digital art special exhibition.
- "Artists & Robots" thematic exhibition.
- Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda.
- Mexican artist living in France, Miguel Chevalier.
- Italian artist Roberto Pugliese.