Practice:
Observational, Experimental,
Collaborative, Situated
Research:
Postdoc at Aarhus University
Critical Environmental Data

Media Atmosphere: Taipei

Installation / Participatory Research
with Giuditta Vendrame

Treasure Hill (THAV)
Taipei (Taiwan)

2016


the natural world and the technological world are not so distinct. we often think of media as environments, the reverse is just as true — environments are media. the atmospheric envelope holds a latent image of our industrial civilisation and technological culture: did the sky change colors? do clouds have different shapes? are the seasonal movements of bird migration shifting? a matter of concern for scientists, this is an issue we can also address in the context of aesthetics. at the same time, media have peculiar materialities: different textures and grains followed one another; paper and films aged and continued to react to humidity, temperature, light.

for “media atmosphere: taipei”, we dug into collections of images – institutional and amateur films, prints, and digital files – to uncover records of past ambiances: fragments of skies, clouds, rain, mist, sunsets, smoke. we excavated the background, the periphery of the image.

we can look closely at the information in the background, bringing it to the foreground. through a spatial installation that offers materiality to a generative flow of video and audio, we aim to build an atmospheric image, a collective memoir, made of absences, voids, past and present, recorded by multiple hands, across taipei, tightly interwoven.

through the engagement of local inhabitants, visitors, as well as scientists and engineers – the latter visible in the images of cloud seeding and climate control contributed by the taiwanese water resources agency – the question of breathing freely emerged at the same time as a metaphor for freedom and as the literal reality of living through climate change.

contributors: Amy Lin, Winnie Liang, Tom Jones, Marc Plumb (Taipics.com), 台北市寶藏巖文化村協會, Taipei Treasure Hill  Village Cultural Association, Siem Nozza, Annie Zhang, Abby Elskan, 陳冠叡, Henry, Jessie, Yi-Wei, Tsung-Ho, Alex, 吳思嬋, Tsai Xiao Chun, Liou Yihshiou, JiaHaw Wu, C.K.Tsang, 蔡侑邑, 張芳瑀, Shihi Chen, Yu Glen, 蔡易中, Tai Jyh-Huei (Water Resources Agency. Water Hazard Mitigation Center).

🛠

yet incomplete