Immersive VR experience takes audiences away from glitz and glamour of Cannes and to the moon
- Huang Hsin-chien’s show in collaboration with Laurie Anderson is one of the most anticipated events of film festival
- Taiwanese new-media producer’s work a ray of hope for island nation’s emerging artists
One of the most anticipated events of this year’s Cannes Film Festival is happening away from the glitz and glamour of the Promenade de la Croisette.
“Go Where You Look! Falling Off Snow Mountain”, which comprises three virtual-reality installations – Chalkroom (2017), Aloft (2017) and To the Moon (2018) – by American avant-garde artist and musician Laurie Anderson and Taiwanese new-media producer Huang Hsin-chien, is showing at le Suquet des Artistes, a gallery in Cannes’ old town. It is being presented by the Directors’ Fortnight, an independently-run programme taking place in tandem with the so-called official selection of the festival.
Huang was pivotal in the American artist’s adoption of digital technology in the 1990s, when he was invited to work on her first CD-ROM, Puppet Motel (1995). More than two decades later, it is noteworthy that the 53-year-old Huang shares equal billing with his older – Anderson is 71 – and more famous collaborator.
“With my expertise in mechanical engineering, I was usually in charge of VR programming, the interactive interface and 3D animation, whereas Andersonworked on the music, texts, image production and concepts,” Huang says.
A professor at the National Taiwan Normal University’s Department of Design, in Taipei, Huang is a Fulbright scholar who has also spent seven years as an art director in the gaming industry, designed digital projections for pop concerts and, last year, had his work featured on the America’s Got Talent television show.
“Go Where You Look! Falling Off Snow Mountain” offers a glimpse of Anderson’s creative journey into VR. Aloft, her first and admittedly rough-edged stab at VR, begins with viewers slowly falling out of a disintegrating plane. While airborne, participants could reach out and grab objects around them — a flower, maybe, a typewriter, or a raven (a nod, perhaps to The Raven, the final solo record by Anderson’s late husband Lou Reed) — before being transported to other worlds.
Chalkroom, meanwhile, ushers viewers through a wild variety of dark, monochrome rooms in which the walls are covered with chalk paintings (a gigantic, rotating head; a marching phalanx of children) and scribbles (”Angels of Artifice”, “Another Day, another dollar/another day in America”). Words are crucial in this universe: they fly about, fall apart and reform; one of the most poetic scenes of this “experience” is the sight of a tree boasting letters instead of leaves.
These two 15-minute pieces were born out of Anderson’s artistic residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (or Mass MoCA in short), where she was given carte blanche in 2017 to transform one entire building into a “studio space” featuring her choice of past work and new projects.
In To the Moon, which was commissioned by Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art for its lunar-themed group exhibition last year, viewers will find themselves wandering around the satellite’s surface meeting creatures formed by constellations of DNA molecules.
Paolo Moretti, head of the Directors’ Fortnight, describes the installations as another example of Anderson’s embrace of technical innovations to enhance old-school storytelling.
Anderson presented her first – and now cult – concert film Home of the Brave (1986) at the Directors’ Fortnight in 1987 and has been exploring new ways of storytelling ever since, says Moretti, adding: “Her work with Huang, 32 years later, is once again an inspiring lesson in how authors can appropriate new technologies without losing their personal voice.”
On May 15 Huang also screened a VR short at the Cannes Film Market. Part of the Cannes XR Kaleidoscope’s Development Showcase, The Missing Body Episode 1 allows viewers to experience Taiwan’s tumultuous history and traditional rituals by taking the perspective of a dying political prisoner under Chiang Kai-shek’s regime.
Boasting a soundtrack by Lim Giong, the short is being championed as Taiwan’s latest contribution to art-house VR cinema.
“Taiwan has always been proud of its prowess in technology, producing chips, mobile phones, laptops, e-sports equipment and VR systems like Vive,” says Huang.
However, a lack of talent with experience in both art and technology is limiting growth of new media on the island, he says, adding that it has yet to even be widely accepted as an art form.
“For example, whether a VR film even fits the category of ‘film’ was in question,” he says. “Fortunately, the public’s voice has been heard and officials are working to encourage more artists to produce works of new media.”
Changes are already afoot among Taiwan’s art apparatchiks. On May 5, Huang was given a big send-off in Taipei, with the heads of the National Culture and Arts Foundation, the Taipei Film Commission and the Taiwan Public Television Service attending a press conference to show their support for the artist’s “march to Cannes” – and possibly beyond.
“Go Where You Look! Falling Off Snow Mountain” is showing at le Suquet des Artistes, 7 Rue Saint-Dizier, Cannes, until May 25.
