Date｜08.17-11.24.2024
Venue｜Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts
The exhibition attempts to unfold the physical dimensions of time and geography, juxtaposing the wisdom of nature with artificial intelligence to create several compasses for understanding future ecological thinking and practices. The exhibition endeavors to redefine “ecological art" by examining how we can enhance and expand our sensory awareness, create organic processes and cooperative uses between natural and artificial technologies, and place greater emphasis on spiritual and cultural ecological thinking. It also explores learning different rhythms and metabolic schemes, building ecological communities, cycles, and relationships, and how art can navigate the complex, unstable, and seemingly disintegrating network relationships to transform ecology into an alliance, a culture, and a force. Artists from Asia and Latin America propose various methodologies that lean towards ecofeminism—questioning the multiple domination of nature by anthropocentrism and capitalism. This deliberate sampling allows us to consciously reflect on the historical processes and environmental changes from various uneven decolonization contexts, presenting plural and diverse worldviews.
The work by Wu Chi-Yu in the exhibition, Stories of Celluloid: Terra Nullius Data,is an essay film in four chapters that explores the evolving relationship between media history, technology, and the natural world in the age of AI image generation. This chapter, Terra Nullius Data, expresses the lost nostalgia and connection for the natural environment from a digitally native perspective. In the 20th century during the Japanese colonial period, Taiwan's camphor tree industry thrived as camphor was an essential ingredient in celluloid which was used to make film. Once synthetic camphor was invented, demand for the raw material and thus the camphor forestry industry both declined. Today's media development trends are transitioning from analog to digital and further propelled by AI technology. When looking back raises the question: where will our relationship with nature be headed next? This project examines the intricate connection between Taiwan's forests and international media theory. The Mountain Algorithms exhibition debuts this one chapter from Stories of Celluloid and several accompanying archival documents, demonstrating the generative digital forest and the data dynamics behind the imagery.
