The Moment We Meet
Artist: Hsin-Chien Huang
Location: Taipei 101, Taipei City, Taiwan
Year of completion: 2013
Researcher: Xiong Pengzhu
Xinyi District symbolizes prosperity and commercialization. People here seem to be indifferent from each other because they are always busy and hasty. Since Taipei 101/ World Trade Center MRT Station is the local major transportation pivot, what type of public art can make people jump out of the undistinguished and monotonous trifles and take note of the warmth between them? In the gallery at this station to the exit, three themes as “Welcoming Smiles”, “Book of Body” and “a Book for Taiwanese People” are designed in concert for hurried passersby to create their own moment.
“Welcoming Smiles” are synthetic images of faces of old people and children pieced together randomly by the 10*10 mechanical square matrix. These new faces, keeping the original face features, convey mutual emotions and appeal when people encounter each other. The old people and children are chosen to imply that old people, as the future on the timeline, make the viewers imagine the times they may have experienced, while children symbolizing the inheritance of circles of life make people map the prospect for all Taiwanese people through each individual life.
“Book of Body” is presented as the dialogue and close-up of one-to-one or individual organ following people’s flesh faces through the realistic photography of eyes, ears, noses, mouths, hands and feet of different people with different careers from different races, released by means of electronically-controlled flipping, symbolizing the process from unfamiliar to familiar: from eye contact, then greetings and then to body touch. Besides, by virtue of images of partial body, the careers, identities and stories of this presented portrait are connected in people’s mind and thus books of various versions seem to be written by themselves and read for people.
“A Book for all Taiwanese People” has invited four local writers, through conversation with local people, taking the theme of family, nation, history, and future to express their tremendous feelings with poetic and forceful words for this leading zone toward internationalization in Taiwan.
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