Feel the Space (Chung-Han Yao)

Feel the Space  Feel the Space began as a street performance that was live-streamed by the artist on YouTube, intending to let the audience get notifications on their portable devices that “something else is happening in this particular space.” 

The artist selected a place in the city where he lives in and transformed into a DJ, giving a live performance; however, the music was unable to be heard on site; it was live streamed at another space-time: on YouTube. Only ambient sounds were heard at the actual location of the performance, like the wind and the noise from the machine. Therefore, for the audience, the “on-site sound” was split into two parts.

Although the artist welcomes audiences to sign up for advance notices via Line or telegram and to show up at the specific time and place to see his performance; however, usually not that many people would show up in person. The scenes seen by audiences who had showed up in person and the audio-visual recordings on view in Liquid Love ended up being quite similar: the video shows light from the sky, the city, and the artist performing, but the sounds he was producing were played elsewhere, in the cyberspace. The audio-visual recording presented in this exhibition was compiled and edited from several outdoor performances that took place on different days. Moreover, the recordings of the performances are presented in the exhibition at the same time as the actual performances were held. The audiences watching the video in the exhibition also have to use their own portable devices and headphones to connect to the internet and enter into another “live scene,” just like the audiences that were present at the outdoor performances.    

This is an audiovisual creation, but the creator of the video is not a single person but a group of people, a culture, a cosmos, and the artist could only wait and stand by to take action at the right time. Perhaps then, he might encounter his audience by chance.

This work is supported by RC Culture and Arts Foundation.

Chung-Han Yao is an artist, music composer, DJ and assistant professor at the Department of Architecture of Shih-Chien University. Creative practice is a part of Chung-Han Yao’s life, from the seemingly broken fluorescent lamps to the vibrant light; from the deconstructed sound art composing to the dance music production; from the framed works to the reflection on the spatial scale…. He employs the corresponding and contrasting relations of light and sound to trigger viewers’ imagination of physical senses.

Yao has won the First Prize in Sound Art in Digital Art Festival Taipei (2008), Honorable Mention in Taipei Art Awards (2017), and has participated in Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale (2009), NTT ICC-Emergencies!014, Tokyo (2010), STEIM – Massive Light Boner, Amsterdam (2010), City Sonic: International Sound Art(s) Festival, Belgium, (2015), Beyond the Frame: New Media Arts from Taiwan, Long Beach Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2016), and The Way Things Go, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei (2016).
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