The Use and Abuse of Technology in the Arts

Technology is neutral in itself, but can be utilized to realize a certain type of aesthetic presentation that develops a message, while at the same time critiquing  technology’s role in the communication of cultural messages to an audience. Using his own work as an example, Chin Chih Yang will show how art-works can avoid the traps of pure technological formalism, and realize the interactive potential of technology in the arts.

The Use and Abuse of Technology in the Arts

Chin Chih Yang
Thurs, March 8th 2012, 7pm

Too often, it seems, artists use technology in a way that makes works mute, indifferent to human communication. In contrast with this kind of art, my work instances how technology can be used to further interactive communication, while at the same time indicating the potentials dangers (such as alienation) specific to mediated communication. I will discuss several of my projects to broach how artists use technology to present their art works: both positive and negative examples. The talk will emphasize how some artists let technology overshadow their art, and also pose an alternative to this form of practice, showing how technology can be an essential tool when subordinated to aesthetic concerns.I will talk about projects that involve emerging technology, such as roving handheld video projectors. Such technology realizes a certain type of aesthetic presentation which can be used to comment on the nature of technology itself relative to the human role of art-making. I’m also looking for more people to work with me on my project called “The Control of Fear.” So, perhaps my presentation will include mention of this project as well (which uses a variety of mew media), in the hopes of drawing the interest of people who might want to work with me.

Chin Chih Yang — BioMultidisciplinary artist Chin Chih Yang was born in Taiwan, and has resided for many years in New York City. Where he studied at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. Among other honors, he has been a recipient of the Urban Artist Initiative Fellowship, a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a fellowship from the Franklin Furnace, and a fellowship from the New York State Council for the Arts, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council has granted him a Swing Space residency at Governors Island, to name only a few.

His work uniquely incorporates the actual rhythms and discords of human society, exhibiting them in terms of the waste materials wantonly discarded by industrialized production. Finding the modern world both disturbing and entrancing, he aims in his work to capture the complex state of anxiety and compulsive-fascination specific to the contemplation of contemporary social problems. His performances often dramatize the divided quality of the self, and he use video projections to create a discordant ambience specific to the themes of his performances.

An experienced multidisciplinary artist, his interests in ecology and constructed environments have resulted in interactive performances and installations that have been exhibited nationally and internationally; in the United States, Poland, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, he has exhibited/performed in such spaces as: the Rockefeller Center, the United Nations, the Union Square Park, the Chelsea Museum, Queens Museum, the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Exit Art, and Flux Factory and Taipei Art Fair, to name only a few.

Chin Chih Yang’s work has been highlighted in The New York Times, the Taipei Times, CBS, NY Art Beat, the Village Voice, Time Out New York, Flavorpill, Art Radar Asia and Art Asia Pacific magazine. With this, NY1: its celebration of Asian-American artists with a profile of Chin Chih and the vivid works he makes out of mixed media. Also, Humphrey Hawksley of BBC world news interviewed him just last year for a special program on NYC Artists whose work on deals with political and social corruption.

Chin Chih Yang is a 2011 Artist Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). This presentation is co‐sponsored by Artists & Audiences Exchange, a NYFA public program, funded with leadership support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA)

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