Cathedral dedicated in honour of the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception becomes a performance space for modern bat-focused ecological dance

Ars Electronica: Taiwanese dance performance in Linz's St. Mary's Cathedral

"The Mirage Replicas 2.0" by artist Yen-Tzu Chang to be seen a total of seven times in the cathedral church

 

The artist at "work"

At this year's Ars Electronica Festival in Linz (6 to 10 September), St. Mary's Cathedral will once again be the venue for artistic performances. For example, the dance performance "The Mirage Replicas 2.0" by Taiwanese media artist Yen-Tzu Chang will be on view in Austria's largest house of worship, as announced on the festival's website (https://ars.electronica.art), which this year will have the theme "Who Owns the Truth?", can be read.

The half-hour performance, which will be staged seven times during the festival, deals with generational differences within a family and culture. Beginning with the story of the artist's father catching a golden bat, the work also addresses ecological issues related to bats. Symbolically represented by bats, memories and cultural perspectives of the artist are depicted.

During the performance, the dancers constantly change roles, embodying the roles of a bat researcher and the artist in childhood. "How should we deal with the rich human ideas, mythologies, ancient legends, cultural traditions and religious beliefs that have shaped our past?" is central question of the performance, "especially at a time when artificial intelligence is becoming more and more precise, but possibly reinforcing a cultural homogeneity of knowledge?" reads the short description of the work. How to meet these challenges and discover alternative forms of coexistence is what the Taiwanese artist's performance is meant to put up for discussion.

Yen Tzu Chang is a media artist. The Taiwanese artist has been living and studying in Linz since 2014. She has a Bachelor's degree from the New Media Art Institute at the Taipei National University of Art. Since 2011 she has been working in various fields such as interdisciplinary art and experimental performances based on sound installations.

Source

According to the Diocesan website, there are two installations at the Cathedral.

The Mirage Replicas 2.0 

"The Mirage Replicas 2.0" by Yen-Tzu Chang is a media art dance performance that explores generational differences of family and culture. The project carries the artist's memories and cultural perspectives symbolically represented by bats. The performance includes sound data from bats, field recordings, projected images, transparent moving screens that interactively overlay image and dancers:inside, and sensors that track their movements. Throughout the performance, they constantly change roles from bat researcher to childhood artist to deity. How can we deal with world ideas, mythologies, legends, cultural traditions and religious beliefs that have shaped our past, especially at a time when artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly accurate, but perhaps thereby reinforcing a cultural homogeneity of knowledge? - This is the question that Yen-Tzu Chang focuses on. 

Interactive Resonance Sphere 

In the installation "Interactive Resonance Sphere. Exploring the Visual Realm of Sound", Simon Kopfberger and Rita Newman combine kymatics and art. Cymatics, the study of wave phenomena, is a field of research in physics that deals with the visible patterns and shapes created by the interaction of sound vibrations with materials. The artists will experiment with the sound visualisation of water. At a photo-audio station, visitors can interactively visualise their voice or any other frequency. Each individually recorded voice is transferred into a resonance phenomenon that shows unique vibration patterns. An operator controls the experiment, guides the visitors through the recording, explains which knobs need to be (gently) turned to create resonance patterns and takes photos of the resulting geometric patterns. The picture is printed out for the visitors at the end of the session.