UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS—Zheng Da Solo Exhibition

2021.01.30-2021.04.05

Opening：3pm,29th,January,2021

Venue：2nd Floor of Space No.1,Today Art Museum

Curator：Yan Yan

Organizer：Today Art Museum

Co-organizer：Central China Normal University

未知的未知：郑达个展

作为2018年第三届今日王式廓艺术奖的获得者，艺术家郑达的个展“未知的未知”，经过两年时间的储备，即将在今日美术馆1号馆呈现。作为一个理性与严谨的艺术个体，此次展览集中展现了他系统性的工作和方法，通过机器的“冰冷气质”，“理性的运算”，以及“信息投喂”与“机器学习”，将“机器美学”与“智能反馈”所构建的视觉系统呈现于观众面前。同时， 展览将“2020年1月23日”作为一个特定的“时间”概念，展现在此之后，艺术家关于未知的思考。

展出作品《生理反应1》《机器的自在之语》《上传者》等都是艺术家2016年以来的代表作，这些具有截点意义的作品，在迭代过程中逐渐完善并突显出自身的美学系统——在观众触摸作品装置时，机器吞噬人类的体征，随之启用自己的语言来表达对周围环境的反馈，在人类不可见的空间中创造意义和未知。另一方面，作品《未知的指数》，因为疫情的原因，将以方案呈现——再次回应展览主题“未知的未知”——在不断深化的全球化景观之下，经济与互联网、科技的发展成为必然趋势，而疫情的突发与全球蔓延，引发持续发展进程中关于环境和未来的反思。未来并不是全然积极的，不论是科技艺术的发展还是人的最终生存境遇，漂浮着太多的未知。

在艺术领域，关于新媒体艺术本身的发展，进入“后人类”时代的反思截点。随着人对“物”与“能量”的思考，以及对于“身体”与“精神”从哲学到生物学的讨论延展，计算机、数字为载体的艺术领域不断向前发展，特别是在“逼真”问题的历史化进程中，从人机的简单交互，到以控制伦为核心的信息传递与熵的理论，再到生物技术与计算机演进中对于人工智能的探讨，这些理论基础和既定的实践都根深地影响着今天艺术家的创作。郑达的艺术创作一直延续着对机器意识与人工智能的兴趣，他倡导“低科技实验”、“交互”和游戏，与他的艺术具有实验室生成，及跨学科的特性息息相关，同时也与当下中国信息化、娱乐化的发展阶段及公众趣味、消费观念密不可分。其中“游戏”作为一种娱乐方式逐渐改变了人对于现实和虚拟世界认知的边界，对艺术家而言，未来、信息存储及其生命、意识，不同维度的概念边界不再清晰可见，反而随时互相转换。艺术家倡议，在展览闭幕式现场，将发布一台以他为名的“计算机”——他个人的AI——将不断通过学习“郑达”的信息，趣味、交互方式和反馈，在不远的未来，将代替郑达回复信息、处理决策——以此成为“他”。

以流动的时间作为视角，这个展览既是进行状态中的一次分享，同时也将成为起点，开启新的未知。

策展人 晏燕

2020.12.28

Unknown Unknowns – Zheng Da Solo Exhibition

The winner of 2018 The Third Session of Today Art Museum Wang Shikuo Award, artist Zheng Da, reveals his solo exhibition “Unknown Unknowns” at Space No. 1, Today Art Museum, after two years of development. As an artistic individual of rationality and rigor, this exhibition focuses on presenting his systematic work and method, the visual system built by “machinery aesthetics” and “intelligent feedback” that is seen through machines’ “cold character”, “rational calculation”, “information feeding”, and “machine learning”. The  exhibition marks “January 23, 2020” as a specific concept of “time”, showing the artist’s thoughts regarding the unknown that comes afterwards.

“Physiological Reaction 1”, “The Unfettered Language of Machine”, and “Uploader”, are the artist’s typical works since 2016. These artworks carry the significance of a phase, and they gradually refine in the process of evolvement and highlight their inherent aesthetic system; when audiences touch the installations, machine engulfs the physical characters of the human-being and activates its own language to express the feedback to the surrounding environment, creating meaning and unknown in a space unperceivable by humans. Meanwhile, the work “Unknown Exponent” is only displayed as a project plan due to the pandemic, which again responds to the theme “Unknown Unknowns”; under the continuing and deepening globalization phenomenon, the development of economy, internet, and technology had become an inevitable tendency. However, the outbreak and global spread of the pandemic calls for reflections on the environment and future in the development process of sustainability. The future is not always optimistic, whether it is the development of art and technology or the ultimate circumstance of human survival, there is too much unknown that is floating around.

The development of new media art has stepped into a juncture of reflections on the “post-human” era. As mankind ponder on the concept of “object” and “energy”, as well as expanding discourses from philosophy to biology regarding “body” and “spirit”, the art field manifested in computers and digits continue to develop, especially on the historical process of pursuing of “Life-Like”, from basic interactions of humans and machines to informational transmission and theory of entropy revolved around cybernetics, then to the discussions on artificial intelligence in the evolving biological and computer technologies.This theoretical basis and established practices root deeply in the creations of current artists. Zheng Da has consistently followed the interest in machine consciousness and artificial intelligence within this global context. He focuses on “low-tech experiments”, “interaction”, and the nature of game simulation, relevant to the form of laboratory and interdisciplinary properties in his art. Nevertheless, his practices are inseparable from informatization, the tendency towards entertainment, popular interest, and consumerist views that is localized in China. The “game” as a form of entertainment thus altered the boundary between human perception of the worlds of reality and simulation. The future, information storage and its life, consciousness, and various perspectives of conceptual boundaries are no longer clearly defined for the artist. On the contrary, their form of existence could translate into one another at any given time. The artist proposes that, at the closing ceremony, a “computer” named after him is to be announced, artificial intelligence of his own. Through continuous studies of “Zheng Da’s” data, ways of interaction and response, this apparatus will eventually reply to information and process decisions on behave of him in the near future, in that sense becoming “him”.

Founded upon the perspective of the flow of time, this exhibition is an occasion of sharing with an on-going status, as well as becoming a starting point, from which the new unknown unveils.

Curator  Yan Yan

2020.12.28