主編語

Abstract

In 2018, the International Council of Museums took "Hyperconnected Museums: new approaches, new publics" as its theme, which the future engaged with contemporary art and cultural institutions and technologies. In the early days, art museums considered technologies a tool, taking advantage of its characteristics to represent museum collections' splendor in digital form, and reshape the cultural presentation mechanism. Today, at the onset of museum 2.0, the introduction of new media and digital technologies into museums has become a global trend in museums' development. On the one hand, the interactive, digital, and novel applied display technology has shortened the distance between museums and visitors, allowing museums to present more vividly. On the other hand, the diversity, dynamism, and openness of digital artistic practices have become architectural spaces that challenge traditional white cubes and black boxes. For instance, the British Museum launched the "Virtual Reality Weekend" in 2015, adopting virtual reality technology in exhibitions. When visitors wore the Samsung Gear VR, they were immediately transported to the Bronze Age, 3,500 years ago. Facing a dome with an open gate, visitors can enter the space and see the 3D-scanned bronze artifacts closely, hearing the wood-burning and birds chirping. The collaboration exhibition between the British Museum and Samsung attracted more than 1,200 visitors within just two days, which was significantly successful. 

Under this trend, major museums in Taiwan, such as the National Palace Museum, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, have introduced new media art or technology-based art exhibitions, aiming to reshape museums' characteristics with new types of art exhibitions. Therefore, the symbiotic relationship between art museums and technology is apparent. This issue will take "Art Museums and Digital Technology" as its theme to explore the symbiotic relationship between contemporary new media, digital technology, and art museums. Two thematic articles are included in this issue: "Reenacting Rituals and Subverting Official Histories - Chia-Wei Hsu's Marshal Tie Jia and Its Strategies (20122016)," written by Cheng Hsin-yun in English, explores the ethnographical turn in contemporary art reflected by Hsu Chia-wei's trilogy works, which integrate images, text, and installations. Through work analysis, the author investigates approaches that connect regional cultural networks by analyzing Hsu's works. From the perspective of technology-based art, Li Ping-yeh discusses the representation of paintings in image technology in his "Experiments and Reflections on Painting's Derivative Layer: Pixelinterface and Style Transfer" Li tries to interpret the phenomenon that we appreciate paintings through light, pixels, and algorithms and proposes the notion of "Derivative Layer" given to paintings through image technology, writing about the irreversible interdependence between today's paintings and image interface. 

Besides, two articles are included through a general open call and analyze individual artists' creative process in photography and sculpture, respectively. In Lu Hsiao-yu's "The Alchemy of Motherhood: An Analysis of Wang Hsiao-ching's Photographic Works," she looks at how Wang Hsiao-ching expands the creative significance of mothering and nurturing to creative artistic practices. Lu also turns the one-way birth (mother to child) to a mutual (mother and child) life narrative process of reflection, growth and decline, and cycle of aging and growth. Chang Ching-wen analyzes the "Oriental consciousness" in Cynthia Sah's works after the 1990s in "Exploring the Way of Nature through the thinking of 'L'écart': An Analysis on Cynthia Sah's Sculpture." With "l'écart" (the gap) proposed by French scholar François Jullien, Chang aims to distinguish the difference between Sah's view of creation and the Orientalized discourses emphasizing one's identity in Taiwan's abstract sculpture; from there, Chang discusses the intention of the "Oriental consciousness" in Sah's works.

To sum up, although the limited amount and topics of articles in this issue cannot reflect the complicated relationship between art museums and technology on a large scale, they can still provide a different perspective to the readers.