Cybercube
2017–
Medium
Real-time computerized lighting, LED mapping, wireless LED control, motion capture, Art-Net, custom processing console
Dimensions
5m × 5m, Height 3.6m
Category
Collaborators
FOCA (Formosa Circus Art), mwva, PSquare
Exploring the possibilities of human existence, escape, fusion, and traversal between virtual and real space. A camera captures the real scene, which is then combined with 3D objects to present virtual elements within a hybrid physical space. Within this space, a real circus performer manipulates a technologically enhanced LED cube alongside computer-controlled lighting. The cube and its environment shift between liquid, fragmented, and ever-changing states — as if the entire venue were an organic life form redefined. Inspired by William Gibson's 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, the work depicts a kind of self-correction born from ignoring the rapid advance of information technology. The cube symbolizes a network device — the performer begins to move freely within it, then becomes unable to break free. Eventually the performer discovers a way to log into cyberspace: the boundary between virtual and real begins to blur. Is the end an act of consumption, or of fusion? The audience witnesses it all.
Exhibitions
2023 Tainan Next Art Award, Zuei-Mei Gallery, Tainan
2023 "Homogeneous Heterogeneity" Solo Exhibition, National Tsing Hua University Art Center, Hsinchu
2017 Performance 36 Rooms, Yongan Arts Center, Muzha, Taipei
Gallery
Video
Behind the Scenes
In the late summer of 2017, a group of young people — each accomplished in their own fields yet brimming with imagination for cross-disciplinary creation — came together through this project. Though their specialties differed, their openness and mutual respect allowed interactive technology, lighting, visuals, music, and circus to converge on a single stage in Taiwan.
Chin-Hsiang Hu, a media artist never easily satisfied, spearheaded the integration of team, concept, and technology, driven by the ambition to realize an international-scale art production.
mwva, with over a decade of audiovisual practice and recent forays into computer-controlled lighting, created the real-time light-and-sound experiments. PSquare, an emerging media art team specializing in interactive installations and moving images, led the LED lighting design. FOCA Formosa Circus Art, one of Taiwan's few professional circus troupes with over ten full-time performers and 165 international festival appearances across 17 countries, choreographed the cube performance.