Curators: TSENG Yu-Chuan

Date: 2018/02/10 ~ 05/06
Place: Digiark, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

Artists: aaajiao (China), Gregory CHATONSKY (France), HUANG Yi-Ching (Taiwan), LUO He-Lin (Taiwan), Kyle MCDONALD & Lauren MCCARTHY (United States), Akihiko TANIGUCHI (Japan), Carlo ZANNI (Italy)

For electric speed was not an extension of human senses but a denial of them. It took us into a world of simultaneity and instancy… —Neil Postman

For electric speed was not an extension of human senses but a denial of them. It took us into a world of simultaneity and instancy… —Neil Postman No sooner did the Internet emerge, than messages and images began to evolve constantly, which has become the emblem of the era of electronic media. The “age of show business” is the term that Neil Postman (1982, 2015) coined as his criticism of this era. This viewpoint finds contemporary expression in the world of digital media today. In the torrent of infoxication, people crave for superficial, cheesy and sensational information, leading to the decline of collective intelligence. Digital technology confines people to the screens of various electronic devices by displaying information with flowing images and dissolving it with game-like scenes that flow even more rapidly. Digital technology also rediscovers the secret to life and the glory of living as well as fosters the digital culture by imbuing knowledge, life, religion and art with entertaining quality in an instant, personalized and real-time manner. People are delighted to embrace the culture, relishing technological services that not only assign new symbols and meanings to things in their quotidian existence, but also allow people to pursue instant pleasure by switching between the real and the virtual within a constantly connected network, and hence enter the chimeric consciousness intersected by realities and illusions. The way of interpersonal communication and the awareness of existence evolve when people sever their ties with physical senses. Comprising a total of twelve pieces of work, the exhibition Lost in the Net Dream invites seven artists to address the four subjects that are continually deconstructed and reshaped over the Internet: signals, consciousness, rights and information. Digital technology and Internet media are probably best known as the center of information and knowledge, the factory of games and entrainments, as well as the instrumental platform for economic development. However, the role now incorporates the mission of reshaping human cultures and lifestyles. Accordingly, the key question that this exhibition seeks to address is that whether we can keep ourselves sober in the digital environment by comprehending the meanings of media and reflecting on the environment in which messages and their symbolic meanings are broadcasted, instead of being overwhelmed by the surging flood of information and indulging ourselves in the pseudo-contexts woven with delightfully entertaining messages.