Year

2021

Exhibition

Somwhere in the Distance, Somewhere towards the Froest

Venue

FreeS Art Space | Taipei, Taiwan

Project Type

Video Intallation

Tools

Projectors,

Project Overview

As a new media artist group, Winnie Hsu and Viviane Roi have been collaborating since 2018, their works primarily feature video installations and projection pieces. In 2021, they held a joint exhibition, "Somewhere in the Distance, Somewhere Towards the Forest," at Frees Art Space in Taipei. The exhibition presented five video installations exploring "non-place" spaces defined by information overload and disconnection. It used trees and forests as metaphors for community relationships, interpreting the interactions between social media, electronics, and the negative space created by time, distance, and virtuality.

Concept / Statement

We are all moving somewhere in the distance, somewhere towards the woods. Non-place is a word created by the French anthropologist Marc Augé. It refers to spaces where human beings remain anonymous and are not regarded as "places." In the past, our imagination of a place came from the history and memory it carried. However, with the continuous updating of technology, transportation and media have shortened the relative distance between people and spaces. It could be actual distance, a distance of time difference, distance of social media, or distance of relations that seems to be close but actually falling apart. Spaces like "non-place" filled with anonymous contracts and can be updated continuously are gradually increasing. As a result, in the excessive overload of individual movement and information transmission, people begin to feel the loneliness of losing connections. We have created technology and been controlled by technology. It happens in actual spaces for such a short and transitional state and reflects on the perceptual experience. In this exhibition, trees and forests metaphorize the relationship between individuals and community, intending to interpret the interaction between social media and electronic products and the negative space formed by time, distance, and the virtual world through images, sound, and light installations.

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Zones within Zones

ARTIST | Vivianne Roi, Winnie Hsu

2021 real-time visuals | projector, trail camera, plants

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People originally installed security cameras in public or private spaces, intending to make themselves more secure. However, thousands of surveillance cameras have been exposed on the Internet and are accessible to all Internet users. These unsecured cameras are located in "places," such as houses and bedrooms, or in "non-places," such as malls, restaurants, freeways, parking lots, and green spaces of all countries in the world.

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Within the specific live-streaming cameras that target trees, leaves, and green spaces as the main subjects, this video installation intends to blur the boundary between places and non-places. While watching 11 real-time feeds of the cameras arranged by time zones, the audience will also be watched by the trail camera hidden in the tree.

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With the installation spying on the audience, and the audience spying on the trees, this piece changes viewers' perspectives on observation and being observed. Simultaneously, the exhibition venue can also be seen as a "non-place," which takes place between the virtual world and actual spaces in which people anonymously interact with each other.

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Lost in the Untitled Island

ARTIST | Winnie Hsu

2020 experimental video | projector

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An experimental video recording lost places of the untitled island by using scanned 3D models and point cloud data to depict the life of the steadily vanishing virtual island.

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Middle of Nowhere

ARTIST | Vivianne Roi, Winnie Hsu

2021 single channel video installation | 3.5''LCD screen, neon light, woods

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“One in four people reported to researchers that they have no one with whom they can discuss important issues, and that is three times as many people as in 1980.” We are currently more disconnected and lonelier than ever when technology is contributing to the increase in loneliness — always trying hard to reconstruct the relationships with people around us, which, in the past few years I’ve suffered to bring back and failed. It was as if a forest fire arose and burned down all the trees abruptly and a lone tree in the woods who still got no place to belong. I feel so detached and abandoned by this universe. Even when I stand in a row, but actually I’m in the middle of nowhere.

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[Chorus] Orchestrating Escapes

ARTIST | Vivianne Roi

2018 single channel video installation | projector, motor, plastic net, plant

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“Neither Here Nor There” is a cross-border video installation. The distance between Taiwan and the United States is 12208km, the time difference is 13 hours, and the temperature difference is 20 degrees. I miss the subtropical forests while I’m in the coniferous forest, I think of the coniferous forest while staying in the subtropical forest back and forth. Are you sure you want to leave this site? (Changes you made may not be saved.) CANCEL/LEAVE

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Neither Here nor There

ARTIST | Vivianne Roi, Winnie Hsu

2019 dual channel video installation | projectors, motor, aluminum track

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“Neither Here Nor There” is a cross-border video installation. The distance between Taiwan and the United States is 12208km, the time difference is 13 hours, and the temperature difference is 20 degrees. I miss the subtropical forests while I’m in the coniferous forest, I think of the coniferous forest while staying in the subtropical forest back and forth. Are you sure you want to leave this site? (Changes you made may not be saved.) CANCEL/LEAVE

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