Expanded Cinema
If “Unknown” could be predicted, what would be the meaning of “Future”?
The existence of time provides a sense of time sequence. It is intently studied as a scalar quantity by contemporary scientists. It is one of the most critical topics in Physics nowadays. Also, time is the base element in various simulation software which uses theories and algorithms to predict phenomena in the future. With advanced simulation software, we can visualize a vast amount of data. The virtual camera changes our way of observation, reducing the risk found during decision-making. For example, we use the real-time traffic information application to predict the arrival time of the vehicles and plan the various traveling routes. Although the application may help us avoid all the random events, whether it will create a numb traveling experience. Digital data include conversation records, consuming receipts, countless CCTV cameras and QR codes. Since our behaviour would be converted into the interactions among various digital data, humans transform themselves as the micro components, giving up their own individual judgment. Likewise, the pixel of a digital camera illuminates in a particular position to compose a complete image; construct an image containing the collective purpose.
Photography is usually linked with time freezing, recorded and formed history within frames. Developed after the existence of the painting, photography is a crucial visual recording method, storing our past inside chemicals and electronics. Provided an altered reality visual experience, its presence affects the current moment and even the future. To explain, the film recording the war that occurred in the past gave us the ability to visually examine the whole historical events, letting people imagine the past in the manner of “metanarrative”. The narration might create a fixed answer for history. After decades, we may still access those historical visual archives through technology and replay those events once or more, so as to convince ourselves to believe it is the only answer. Frame by frame, therefore a fixed history turns the interesting stories with imagination to monotonous and brutal image records. A bygone era hence converts into rolls of film, but it never stops people from using film as a medium to imagine the future.
When the chronological timeline is systematically converted into data through categorisation and quantification, and at the same time computer processing power exponentially increases, the relationship among humans, the unknown and the future will consequently be changed by various simulation software. For instance, software may provide risk management suggestions to the user targeted on the “event”. After that, the users’ “future” becomes not exactly “unknown”. Their choices are restricted based on a specific situation while their imagination towards the future will never be made intuitively again, but rationally. As a hypothesis, there is a computer network which facilitates environmental and historical data for prediction, producing meaningful and realistic imagery prophecies for the users’ question. With the development of the computer network’s accuracy, would people change their decision towards something?
Unknown activates curiosity and creativity, generating new knowledge and new perspectives. On the condition that humans lose the ability to accept the unknown and control fear, we reduce the enormous probability of the future, leaving boring results. As a consequence, we could not overcome an uncontrollable process, and blindly seek success. Similar to a beast that lived in the forest of knowledge, it followed the smell of desire and hunted the predicted prey. Instead of noticing the surroundings, their vision could merely focus on the mechanical pixels.
The exhibition "Alter tempo" expands these concepts to a series of new media artworks. In the exhibition, the artist will explore time, manipulate light and shadow, and reprogram images, express his reflections on the future and the unknown.