The Train Hamasen
First Place – Kuan-Yuan LAI
People from different cultures and generations coexist in a dreamy world ‘ Hamasen’, once the most prosperous area in Kaohsiung. In this utopia of memories, the intrigue on and under the chess table is blurred and blended into the harmony of the traditional market. A train falls from the sky, arrives at the platform on the screen, like in a movie, and gathers everybody for a journey through time and space.
HyperSpectral
Second place – Kevin Blackistone
This piece expands a prior planetarium work (Spectral Lines) in which research data and the resultant knowledge of four exoplanets was used to create visuals through data source visualization and design inspiration. As a new flood of extra-planetary data comes in through the recently deployed James Webb Space telescope, Hyperspectral condenses these design elements into a simultaneous and multilayered abstraction of multiple planets and systems. In this new virtual space an attempt is further made to imbue a sense of the extreme distances which can only ever be extrapolated and not directly determined through the monoscopic lense of the telescope.
Alien (2022)
Third place – Gabriella Presnal
The work of the same name was loosely inspired by the film Alien (1979) and American propaganda surrounding the Atomic Age. Alien (2022) was interested to explore the contrasts and similarities between the alien & atomic as well as possible intersections with ideological concepts of alienation as a result of the two. The work features audio cut from the animated A is for Atom (1953) by Sutherland Productions (public domain) which has been critiqued as a largely successful American propaganda short used to promote atomic utopianism during the Atomic Age.
Lagoon
Featured artist 1 – Yu-Hsuan Yao
Lagoon, the beauty reflects on its name and inspires many. While the scene of Emmeline splattering the water under moonlight in the movie The Blue Lagoon(1980) stays in one’s mind forever, we cannot help but wonder, will there only be artificial lagoons in the future?
Holes of matter (2022)
Featured artist 2 – Anabela Costa
A hole is an aperture, an opening through something, an empty space that gives you access to another. In a metaphorical way, we can say that holes of matter are the way to discover and explore other fields, through a hole the magic of a potential new world where everything is possible is in.