00 INTRO

What’s Happening Artist? Vital Capacities artist studio preface 線上駐村藝術家做什麼？

Hello, my name is Tzu-Huan Lin. Welcome to my studio!

I am a Taiwanese artist living and working in Brooklyn so please bear with my English. In my studio you will find my research, work in progress and my Vtuber. Many times during artist talk people ask me about how I create video work? Does the narrative(story) come first or the image itself? It’s like a chicken and egg question for me, I like to see things Janus faced. Standing in the cross road makes me able to see the destination so I can make some detours on the way.

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A Train to Utopia: Spacetopia

Screen shot. An island floating outside the circular space. Inside the space is multiple stars and a big sun.
Spacetopia

I ran three workshops during the residency. Each of them had eight participants signed up for different occupations. I create a virtual journey ran on Hubs by Mozilla. The journey to utopia start with a train trip then traveled to several worlds to learn the idea of utopia and what other utopian did. At the end of the workshop, the participants will co-create a utopia that solved different problems in that specific world.

Screen shot. Several houses on astroid, a cat meme gif on the right, below is a pink pig. A big sun at far side and earths. A pizza floating and several gifs.
Residencial area

Spacetopia is an interesting world. There’s no gravity in space so everyone will be flying. The spacecraft broke and they stuck here. The utopians have enough food and water but they will need to decide whether to stay here or prepare to explore another world. If their team chooses to stay, they will need to build settlements, food, facilities… etc. If their team chooses to leave, they will need to split the team to work on base to repair the spacecraft and the other to explore places to build outside this galaxy.

They played both part, built a settlement and explore the outer space. Here’s what they build and what they found.

Screen shot. A camp site with bonfire and tree. In the middle is a portal to another world.
At outer space there’s a island, on top of the island is the camp site. A teleportation is there.
The future world at year 5000, the land is pink, the sky is blue with amazing gradient from dark blue to light blue accompany with neon green light, neon red light. Only one time machine on the ground. Super future like feeling!
The future world at year 5000
Screen shot. Back to the space. A volcano in the center back. A weird space dog like animal on the left. On the front is a waterfall with some green trees.
Volcano and some weird animal
Screen shot. A time travel portal like spiral tunnel in purple and black. With an orange butterfly in the middle and an ape at the further side.
A time travel black hole?
Screen shot. A weird flow at front left bottom corner. Astroids floating at back with three earths and a big sun.
Three earths
Screen shot. The big sun. It has extended rays floating in yellow and orange with some purple dots floating too.
big sun
Screen shot. Inside the earth. A shit in the middle...
inside the earth is a shit…
Screen shot. In the space some white transparent light beams in the center.
some light beams
Screen shot. A far view of the whole utopia they built. A sun, astroids, earths.
kind of bird view from distance

This Utopia is created by “A Train to Utopia” workshop participants, the name of the participants were display in the utopia tower. To access it please contact me.

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A Train to Utopia: Tree House Utopia

This is a screen shot of the bird view of the Tree House Utopia. At the center is huge trees with facilities. Looks like an island is next to it and a pirate ship.
Birds view of Tree House Utopia

I ran three workshops during the residency. Each of them had eight participants signed up for different occupations. I create a virtual journey ran on Hubs by Mozilla. The journey to utopia start with a train trip then traveled to several worlds to learn the idea of utopia and what other utopian did. At the end of the workshop, the participants will co-create a utopia that solved different problems in that specific world.

This is a screen shot. The other angle of the utopia. Several trees with connected wooden board. The utopia had some trees and natural landscape. Must be artificial.
Trees connecting by wooden boards floating on the sea.
This is a screen shot. A view of beach, pirate ship, rock-ish island.
A view from center of the island

The tree house is a classic scenario, due to climate change in the near future the water raised and flooded everywhere. People living on these giant trees.  The problem is there’s not enough food and water for all of you, you will need a clean water system, food system, laboring system and a thing that gives people hope.

Here’s the island with their approach to food system, water system, city center, recreation and landscapes.

This is a screen shot. A red and white stripe lighthouse on the tree house. A well at the edge of the wooden board.
Lighthouse on the tree house
This is a screen shot. A "G" shape working space perhaps. At the far side of the image is a restaurant like building sit on top of the tree.
A working place perhaps…
This is a screen shot. A bunch of green land with gif images. These images are sheep, chicken, pika chu and a image of chief at the far side. It looks like a farm.
Farms with sheep, chief and Pika Chu
This is a screen shot. Six TVs floating at the left part of this image, and a baseball stadium on the right with crowd cheering.
Some TV with Korean Oppa and a baseball stadium
This is a screen shot. Three red/ pink vending machine lined up on the wooden board.
vending machines
This is a screen shot. A sea park like layout. A man made landscape at middle with rocks, greens and a fox? A Orcinus orca jumping off the sea at right and two red octopus at the far side.
sea park?

This Utopia is created by “A Train to Utopia” workshop participants, the name of the participants were display in the utopia tower. To access it please contact me.

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A Train to Utopia : Doge island

This is a screen shot of the utopia. An island with many flying coins and dog meme gifs. There's a bridge connect the island to somewhere. A bank in the center of the island, but a gigantic coin behind it.
Doge island

I ran three workshops during the residency. Each of them had eight participants signed up for different occupations. I create a virtual journey ran on Hubs by Mozilla. The journey to utopia start with a train trip then traveled to several worlds to learn the idea of utopia and what other utopian did. At the end of the workshop, the participants will co-create a utopia that solved different problems in that specific world.

This team on 5.28 choose the scenario: island.

This is a simple island, but the land is limited. So every decision needs to be made precisely. Since the island is so boring, you will need to create a vision that will keep people staying. Such as religious, cult, gambling… etc.

Here’s the utopia, they built an utopia with capitalized cult “doge coin”. Instead of growing their own food and water, they choose a capitalism route. The island is covered by meme gif, that sort of strengthen the cult feeling of the utopians.

This is a screen shot. The other angle of the island. You can see a middle size billboard in the center of island. Behind it is the bank and gigantic coin.
Surprised they have a billboard in the center, old school business compared to crypto.
This is the screen shot. Inside the bank on the island. There's several dog meme gif floating and part of that gigantic coin.
Inside the bank
This is the screen shot. The dog meme gif. It's a Shiba Inu with cute eyes looking at you.
The cult
This is a screen shot. From the other angle, with several red mushrooms... it's kind weird looking. Kind of have this idea of cult...
Mushrooms…
This is the screen shot. The other angle from the island to see through the bridge, you can also see a red small barn besides it. The barn is using for store food I guess... on top of the bridge is more dog meme gifs...
A bridge to somewhere and a barn to save food…

This Utopia is created by “A Train to Utopia” workshop participants, the name of the participants were display in the utopia tower. To access it please contact me.

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A Train To Utopia

A picture of workshop "A train to utopia". It's a color image with a train in middle, background with colorful islands, land, house, settlements, with golden text "A train to utopia".

If Utopia does not exist, can we still get there? Some say it’s just an idea, we can adapt it to our thinking. Some believe it’s in the future. Some Japanese comic picture reincarnate to an unknown world. I am your train conductor. All Aboard! 

*This is a workshop to give the idea of the history of utopia and how to adapt the utopia thinking. The train won’t wait, please be on time.

All passengers must RSVP aboard: https://forms.gle/CStAWQRpNVNbz4Gh7

Trip time: approx. 1hr

Conductor: Tzu-Huan Lin

Passenger: 24 Utopians

Three trains are running, pick your slot below. Each train only has 8 seats.

Train Options:

5/28 11:00am US, 4:00pm UK, 7:30pm India, 11:00pm Taiwan

5/29 11:00am US, 4:00pm UK, 7:30pm India, 11:00pm Taiwan

5/31 11:00am US, 4:00pm UK, 7:30pm India, 11:00pm Taiwan

*Please note you will need your computer and it needs to be a not bad one.

Get your tickets before it’s too late.

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03 Building Utopia on Hubs for workshop

In the past week I tune in with two live streaming, I used hubs to build a 3d space for the future workshop. The workshop is expected to be hold at the end of the residency, somewhere closer to the week of the 20th. The reason to use hubs is that it allows participants to use existing models lively. So during the workshop, they can just create things really fast. Also using the internet as the platform instead of the real world fits the idea of migrant utopia out of physical space into an idea. Although during the workshop I will still ask participants to picture utopia out of the real world. I will play some demo with some of my friends in the next live streaming. I am using this software called hubs from Mozilla, and here you can see I am using its environment building software called spoke.

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02 The Beginning: Two video works in the past two years that related to this project #Utopia #Satellite #Displacement

I’ve been working on this project for the past two years, during the time I made two videos that related to the subject. As I mentioned before, I couldn’t digest the subject into one simple work.
The Journey begins at the end of 2017 after I finished a project called “The Yellow Snake Is Waiting”. As usual, I look inward to see what is that thing I want to express in the form of Art. I started to paint. I painted some sea turtles and artificial satellite

A painting on canvas. Acrylic painted three sea turtles. Background is green and black gradient with three white sea turtle in the center with only outlines.
Acrylic painted three sea turtles.
Acrylic on canvas painting. Black background with dark blue green in the middle looks like sea and a human like artificial satellite in dark blue on the left top.
Acrylic painted artificial satellite.

◐◒◑◓ 6 months past ◴ ◵ ◶ ◷

In 2018 during my 6-month residency at Trestle Art Space, I was thinking about the relationship between sea turtles and artificial satellites. 20000 miles under the sea caught my eye, one of the main character Captain Nemo, he lost his family back to his hometown now he traveled the underworld took it as his land. This reminds me of the idea of Utopia, my journey from Taiwan to the United State. My research shifted from artificial satellite to Utopia…

Continue reading “02 The Beginning: Two video works in the past two years that related to this project #Utopia #Satellite #Displacement”

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