Among the Asia-Pacific countries, Taiwan ranked fourth in the 2018 Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum. The hardware manufacturing industry of Taiwan also ranked first on the influence and importance to the global IT market. Recently, the Ministry of Culture and the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) have listed virtual reality (VR) as one of the strategic priorities of future development. In the past few years, Taiwan has demonstrated its creative strength on VR technology in various international competitions, attracting attention from all over the globe. The Venice Film Festival edition of the magazine Variety, it also includes an article covering the latest development of Taiwan’s VR content.
In 2017, Art Basel Hong Kong worked with Google on VR projects. As for Taiwan, there have also been several VR content art projects. La Camera Insabbiata, a work by the American musician Laurie Anderson and Taiwanese new media artist Hsin-Chien Huang, has won the Best VR Experience at the Venice Film Festival. In this work, the artists used VR technology to create the experience of “flying” that takes away the sense of control with one’s body, inviting the audience into a space of emotions and memories constructed by the artists. Bodyless, another work of Hsin-Chien Huang with music arranged by Lim Giong, rocks the distinctive, traditional folk style of Taiwan. Escaping from the body of a prisoner of state, the audience is immersed in the vivid illustration of the daily social scenes of the martial law era.
Afterimage for Tomorrow is a plot-based VR work by director Singing Chen. The director creates an actual room with a dream-like ambiance where texts contemplating life and death are all over the wall. In the virtual world, within the time span of burning a match, one can record three paragraphs of memory for themselves to access before death. And in this very room, people have access to their memories stored in one’s “life archive”. Under the gaze of the audience, Shu-Yi Chou, dancer and narrator of this work, accesses his memories at the end of his life.
The VR content of Taiwan has prospered in this fertile environment and delivered outstanding performances on the international stage. Here, contemporary talents of visual art, techno art, and cinema gather to experiment with new materials and technology, exploring new discourses and models of artist-audience interaction with absolute enthusiasm and creativity.
張玉音（Yu-Yin Chang）( 341篇 )文字女工與一位母親，與科技阿宅腦公的跨域聯姻，對於解析科技、科學與藝術等解疆界議題特別熱衷，並致力催化美感教育相關議題報導，與實踐藝術媒體數位轉型的可能。策畫專題〈為何我們逃不出過勞？藝術行政職災自救手冊〉曾獲金鼎獎專題報導獎，並擔任文化部、交通部觀光局指導的「台灣藝術指南」專冊、「台灣藝術指南TAIWAN ART GUIDE」APP研發計畫主持，以及Podcast節目「ARTbience藝術環境音」製作統籌。曾任《典藏．今藝術》企畫編輯、副主編、社團法人台灣視覺藝術協會理事，現為藝術新媒體「典藏ARTouch」總編輯。