Episode 056 Yuhsien Chen

Show Notes

This week on the show we are continuing to expand our perspective on the time-based media conservation ecosystem in Taiwan, with our guest Yuhsien Chen. In the handfull of years that she has been dedicated to time-based media conservation Yuhsien has been up to some incredibly exciting things. We heard her name come up back in episode 46 when visiting with her colleague and collaborator Tzu-Chuan Lin, about work they did together at the National Taiwan Museum of Art – and as you’ll hear in today’s chat there’s so much more. For years now Yuhsien been leading the Save Media Art Project in Taiwan, and fascinatingly just wrapped up what I’m guessing is probably the first Fulbright scholarship focused on time-based media conservation, which brought her to New York City where for the past few months she has been embedded within both the museum of modern art – and Rhizome. Yuhsien however has been keen to find a way to carve out her niche in her hometown, and all of the information and practice that she observed and absorbed during her Fullbright has led some pretty surprising conclusions. Tune in to hear Yuhsien’s story!

Links from the conversation with Yuhsien
> https://savemediaart.wixsite.com/sma-tw

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ben: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host, Ben Fino-Radin and on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past present and future of art and technology. Well, folks, we are back. I hope you didn't miss me too much last week. This week on the show, we are continuing to expand our perspective on the time-based media conservation ecosystem in Taiwan. 

[00:00:22] Yuhsien: Hi, my name is Chen Yuhsien I'm an independent time-based media art conservator and researcher from Taiwan. 

[00:00:29] Ben: In the handful of years that Yuhsien has been dedicated to time-based media conservation, she has been up to some incredibly exciting things. We heard her name come up already back in episode 46, when visiting with her colleague and collaborator, Tzu-Chuan Lin about work they did together at the national Taiwan museum of Art, and as you'll hear in today's chat, there is so much more Yuhsien has for years now been leading the Save Media Art project in Taiwan and fascinatingly just wrapped up what I am pretty sure is probably the first Fulbright scholarship focused on time-based media conservation. This brought her to New York city, where for the past few months she has been embedded within both the Museum of Modern Art and Rhizome. Yuhsien however, has been keen to find a way To carve out her niche in her hometown and as I think you'll hear all of the information and practice that she absorbed during her Fulbright has led to some pretty surprising conclusions, which you'll just have to say tuned to find out. Quick reminder, before we get started, if you can't get enough of the show, I highly recommend clicking the link in the show notes to our Patreon where our lovely little community of supporters enjoy all kinds of extra and exclusive content. Hope to see you over there soon and now without further delay, let's dive in to this week's chat with Chen Yuhsien. 

[00:01:47] Yuhsien: I think since I have memory, I've always loved drawing. In the very beginning stage, even still now, it was Japanese animation, comics and computer games culture that influenced me a lot. If we are only talking about arts as a general term. And so I was also very involved in cosplay. I attend cosplay event and I made my own clothes and equipment myself. I think that was where I experienced a little bit of handcrafting and trying to analyze a structure of something to make it happen. But more into the fine art is my parents. They had a college student major in fine art to teach me like panting still object by a watercolor when I was about 10 years old. And it does not even last a year because I pissed this teacher off. I ask her why it has to be an apple to be drawn in red because I keep drawing it in whichever color that I like at the moment. So she eventually just gave up. My parent, they eventually sent me to a private art studio, and there I met a mentor. He's also the owner of the studio and watercolor artist himself. And I think he changed my view of art because his teaching style is quite different from what in Taiwanese we will say, if you want to go to an, art college or design college, you have to go to like a prep school that will have teachers tell you how to technically draw a perfect sketch. And I hate that. But that teacher, that mentor, he teaches in a very different style instead of technique. He always just guide us more in a conceptual way and want us to see art as a way to communicate. And he also didn't restrict us on using any type of material, even though he suggests to start with oil painting, but not in the traditional style of oil painting. He just say, use it as whatever you like. So I think that experience expanded my concept of what art can means as a way to communicate. There were about five to six students at the same time, but our works are all totally different. And you can just see the word related to the characteristic of the student. So that is a moment I think, oh, art can do more. It's not just about drawing something. You feel cool, you feel beautiful. And for that until like high school I decided to go to a design school. So I told my parent even though I know that my grade can get me to other type of major, that most of the Asian parents would think you will have a better fortune, I just fight with them and saying that, no, I wanted to go to a design college. I quickly realized that my technical ability is not as good as my classmates. But, uh, I also found out that I have other advantage for example, like, I constantly being selected as a project leader who gather all the students opinions and distribute who should be doing what. And then I would plan the time schedule and try to put everyone together and then present the solution and the outcomes. as everyone get more experience in that, I started to get compliment, like, oh, we love to be in group with you. Because apparently my classmates think I can organize the team quite well without having a fight. So I think that is where I started to feel like, oh, it's not just about your design technique. It also involve a lot of communication and project planning, and that might be something that I also enjoy just to see how people happily work together, I would say. I started to distinguish am I going to be an artist, designer or someone more into a project planning, that type of position. I also found myself not being patient enough to be a visual designer, like staring at the monitor and to do those very tiny and picky move of one pixel. So when I was about to graduate, I was just thinking about, well, where should I go? So I eventually went to a master's school in Taiwan University of Art, a major in museum study. In the beginning I was wanted to learn more about exhibition design, but I didn't really get what I want about exhibition design in that school. But I met another professor, she was more focused on like material cultural, and she has a dual background in economic and archeology. So she encouraged me a lot. Like, Oh, don't drop the school just. Take your time, maybe for a year, and then go to work, go to see the world. So after my first year I listened to that teacher, so I didn't like, entirely cut my relationship with the school. I just called a pause and then I went to my first job, which was a website planner plus 2D animation designer. So my role is basically to listen to what customer want for their website, but at the same time, if there's a need to do 3D animation, I also have to deliver the animation. And, you know, animation on the website are usually made by Flash 12 years ago. And I remember that there was one animation, it should not be made by Flash, but my manager forced me to made it in Flash. And it was a disaster just to calculate the time and to write script to start and stop the background music And eventually my manager listened to one of her friends and told her that, oh, this should be made in Premier. So I redone it and when I later got into media conservation, I eventually realized, oh, that was my first emulation or migration experience. I still can recall that process just trying to map all the frames from Flash into premier and use all the same material that I draw myself. And it was also from there that I realize. The visual texture between vector base and bit base image under the same resolution can be pretty obviously different and how the software could trick you. Yeah, so that was quite an interesting experience for me. Eventually I quit the job and then it comes to my first internship, very short, two months in National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, and after that two months, I then went to the Mediamatic in the Netherlands to do internship as a CD-ROM archivist. It was 2014 when I was in the Netherlands. I actually never heard of Mediamatic. It was from one of my friends who was quite involved in Interactive design and he suggests me maybe you can just check them out. Even though they don't have any position that I think suitable for me, I can just still write them to see how maybe there were still opportunities. So we set up a Skype call and we chat and I just told them my background and I had one year museum study experience and eventually they tell me, oh, we got a lot of magazine with CD-ROM art together that they kind of wanted someone to archive and catalog. It was at the same time they had another intern, from Maastricht and she was interested in, data visualization. So it was kind of perfect that, someone cataloging and creating the data and then another person, uh, having that data to do something brilliant. I think that was their plan. Mediamatic itself is institution that just wanted to be at the front of all the media development. So by 2014 when I was there, they talk about bio art and fungus, and they kind of just wanted to have someone at least do a minimum job to catalog part of their history. They stopped to publish paper based magazine in 2010 and in their last magazine the founder William, he said in the magazine, that the era of paper publication has ended. So they're just really thinking towards the future. But beside what Mediamatic, think about their CD-ROM art and their magazine. For me it was a perfect opportunity most of my work there was to try to get emulation tools to get those CD-ROM art run again in the correct way. By the time, I know very little about media art conservation, but I get some experience when I wanted to play some vintage game. I just Google it and try to find emulators to enable for me to play the game. I wrote two blogs on Mediamatic website. So I created a simple package as if the file that you just download and it has the emulator, it has a ISO file of the CD-ROM, and it has configuration suggestion. So anyone should be able to download and play it on your suggested operating system environment in that configuration. But it was 2014, so it's not gonna work now. I think at the last month of my internship I started to know emulation on demand is being tested, but it's not like a really a stream that everyone know who to talk to to get this done. Now everyone know you can talk to Rhizome then they will help you with that. When I was in the Netherland, there was a moment, it was my first time being alone in another country for quite a long time. And so you feel that loneliness and wanted to be supported. And there was one night really, really cold and I got headache. I just couldn't sleep. So I woke up and there was a sudden thought that if all of us are leaving our trace on like Facebook how could people know that I'm exist if Facebook is gone? And that gave me quite a huge emotional connection to like really realizing that born digital cultural are really fragile and it could somehow related to your existence and evidence connected to existence is another concept that I learned from my museum study training. That museum is a place that hold the past towards the future, and you have to have the evidence enable to present that. But I also know this born digital evidence, so far, no one is really care about it. I mean, apparently in Taiwan, by the time that it is an absent space in the museum study, in my own opinion, that we are all so focused on ancient and natural science history but these new stuff are constantly disappearing and it just happens in our daily life. Why is that No one in museum profession thinks those things are important, and if we are not keeping them right now as a museum worker, how can I present my history to the future generation? I'm not going to continue to show them what my parents old life was like. I wanted to show them what my life was like. Yeah. So, that realization was coming from feeling lonely and feeling like if I happened to be not able to coming back, I'm a pretty worrisome people. And what can I show my parents what I was doing here? So, you know, me and Tzu-Chuan we were college classmates, but we never really talked in that four year. So when I was in Mediamatic, he was serving his mandatory service in the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art. And apparently his manager wanted to know more about media art conservation. So they got a fund to held a symposium and I think he was trying to find someone to help the museum to do that so he contact me by knowing that I'm doing something looks related in the Netherland. So he just asked me, hey, we got an offer and if you're interested, would you mind to talk to the manager when I'm back? And I was thinking, Whoa, I didn't expect to got an offer to the biggest art museum in Taiwan so fast. And it is totally related to what I'm into right now. So I think why not? But at the same time, I have to pick a supervisor in order to get going and to stay at my master's school. But my supervisor was like normally students get graduated and then have the paper to then go to work. I think you have to reconsider it but for me was like, come on, isn't your goals to get work in the museum? And then I don't need that paper, but I got the opportunity. Why not? So I didn't listen to my supervisor I just jump in. To prepare an international symposium, I have to read a lot of paper, like who should I invited? So switching from Googling emulator then switch to Googling who can join this international symposium. And that gave me an opportunity to read a lot of resources, papers anyone willing to share their experience online, but mostly apparently in Chinese and English. And that was the most fruitful year for me to just absorb all the information online. So it was also the time that I got to just look at like Matters In Media Art website, other website I will just print them out and read it so I did that and I have a huge bunch of folder that have everything in there. And it was also the time that I found the book Re-Collection Jon and Rinehart, they published it in I guess late 2014, and I loved that book. So I just share whatever I know to and we kind of have a common discussion to talk about everything that related to media art conservation and we got the opportunity to go to the collection storage to see how so the video art been collected, how have they been conserved in real situation. So we started to do our own collection survey and our own cataloging, but it was all pretty underground. Meaning that, like, now looking back, I couldn't say it is useless, but I realize that if no one is after you that can pick what you did and then continued it was yeah kind of useless. So now the museum is at the stage that no one is picking up what we were doing when we were in the museum. But anyhow, that symposium end up really satisfied with myself and I get in touch with so many practitioners. Also because I wanted to be more balanced in terms of geographic, so I also invited curators from Japan and a conservator from Korea. So I got to know people and that was also the time that I got to have more connection with Digital Art Foundation in Taiwan. One of their, art director was invited as a advisor for the conference. And he just found out, he know two young people very passionate in media art conservation, and he just listened to whatever we think is right to do. So we started to have a very good relationship with them. And the conference was 2015 so at the end of that year I decided to go back to school, got all the credit done, and have my paper. And because I talked to the manager and she was saying that, yeah, you could go back and we can save your position when you are graduated. So that just sounds about right. So my Master's thesis the collection Management and Preservation of Born Digital Cultural Heritage Taiwan, National Museum of Fine Art, as an case study. So it went well but I was reading a lot of Western European resources for a long time and it was also the year that I'm trying to, going back to see is there anything that has been done within Taiwan? And I happen to have the chance to unfold some of the insight.

[00:22:36] Ben: I know that a big project for you for a few years after the symposium was called the Save Media Art project. But I feel like I don't know very much about that initiative. So I'm curious if you could just tell us a bit about it. 

[00:22:49] Yuhsien: That project started in 2018 as a side project because in 2018 it was the year I just graduated I got the master paper and then back to the same museum. And because previously we built a good relationship with the digital art foundation. It was just started with invitation from the Digital Art Foundation they asked me to just go for dinner with them. And it was also the period that the development of new media art in Taiwan has a big change. That change was initially Digital Art Foundation was running the Taipei Digital Art center, but in early 2018 or late 2017, I can't really recall, the Taipei government, forced the art foundation to retreat from the center. Because they didn't achieve the KPI that the government want. So it was a year with this transition and the foundation found the new Taiwan Digital Arts Center. That was a year I feel like the foundation wanted to find a new topic and to launch something new. So then it turns out to be Save Media Art Project. The Save Media Art Project was mainly trying to touch upon everything that is related to time based media art conservation general. The first project that we were doing is actually a curatorial project that we use virtual reality technology as a documentation tool to document an artwork called the Light of Historical Ending. And it was a kinetic, spatial with laser light that type of work. And alongside with that, Virtual reality exhibition we held several offline talk around the general information about what is time based media conservation and what does it mean to conserve a media art in general. The idea of Save Media Art Project was to do as much translation, experience sharing as much as possible just to try to bring the European and Western theory and practice about time-based media art conservation into Taiwan. We got funded both from the Digital Art Foundation and the National Foundation of Cultural and Art. And so far we have been through four project and it was divided into like different grants that we got annual grant. And the first was that virtual reality. And the second was about Concept Museum of Art, I was trying to imagine how can a museum get rid of all the material part but still consider itself has collection? Is that possible? So it was completely an opposite side of a museum practice for conservation. But I think it is quite important to look at it in another way around, because that was when I started to feel like in Taiwan we will never have the resources to be like a Western museum. We eventually have opportunity to collaborate with Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts that is located in Taipei University of Arts which is also the most important new media art school in Taiwan. Many new media artists was graduated from that school and. In 2015, there was I think a very important exhibition called Rewind Video Art in Taiwan from 1983 to 1999. So I consider it as the first exhibition that somehow started to show the challenge of preservation of video artwork. And I think one third of the artwork was later donated to Kuandu Museum of Fine Art, but the museum never really understand what they collect. and the art director of the Digital Art Foundation is a friend of the current director of that Kuandu Museum of Fine Art, so it was a match that we collaborate together. So last year I spent about half year to go to their collection and done a collection survey and we also held a pretty simple workshop to address how to read the material that artists or the art dealer gave you and put it into your cataloging system. We not even get into look at the detail of the artwork, but my instinct is telling me proper cataloging is something that a museum they can do on their own even when I will not be there. So that was quite a success because, two to three other museum staff also went to the workshop. And then it comes to the four which it was still pairing with Kuandu Museum of Fine Art and we are going to reach out to other universities or museum for example, I targeted museum in Japan and in Korea, just to reach out to see if there are any information that we can exchange, just to assess the, like the current stage of all the contemporary artwork that being donated to the museum, because that is quite common for a university museum that most of the collection were coming from the teacher or the students or the exhibition that was held in the museum. We are also aiming to at least have a website that can show our progress at the end of this year. 

[00:29:39] Ben: So in between what you are currently doing at MoMA and Rhizome, you spent a brief amount of time at the M+ Museum in Hong Kong. I'm curious how that came about and what were you focused on during your time there? 

[00:29:53] Yuhsien: That opportunity was directly coming from Christel Pesme who was the head of conservation department by the time and it was in 2018, she was invited to the National Museum of Fine Art to give another talk. And I always responsible to take our foreign visitor for a tour. So we had a lot of opportunity to talk and apparently, M+ by the time was looking for a time based media or conservator. And Yeah, I migrated there. And you can imagine that was in the middle of opening a huge museum and I am the only conservator by the time so, and I immediately attend the first time-based media committee, and it was also my first time working in the full English speaking environment. So I would say it was really, really challenging and everyone works in the very fast speed. But you know, just trying to adapt to that. I think the good thing being in a chaos like that in a good way is everyone respect that you are in the chaos. So, for me it feel like you can really make change if you catch the opportunity to talk to the right person to make the right connection, which for me is very excited. And something that I'm still quite proud of what I did in M+ is I got the trust from the IT team, which is really important for time-based media. Conservator, we can install most of the equipment ourself and without their constantly monitoring. So I'm still proud of myself. And the second is you know, there is a lot of menu that require digital and video content. So it was a really big topic whenever we went to that time based media committee internally, and I am the one that trying to force everyone to just tell what you are working on in terms of what do you want it to show? And it all started with a very simple question from Christel. She asked me about who, where and how should I prepare all the video files for each venue. And then it turns out to be a massive diagram of. I think at least five to six different venue that require video content. Each of them all work with different contractor because they were planned separately by different people. So for everyone to understand, oh, it's not that simple to knowing that and. With that diagram, we are able to present it to the IT team to saying that this is something that we should be prepared. But it was just by the moment that I kind of feel like I'm finished then I mentally decided that I have to leave Hong Kong. After that I went back to Taiwan in September, it was 2019. September and that is when I finally decided to pick up the Safe Media Project as part of my career. Before that, the Save Media Art Project was kind of like, a side project, but that transition from Hong Kong back to Taiwan make me like seriously picking it up and through this project, what can I do? So, while I'm back in Taiwan in 2020, I've been constantly looking for opportunity for myself just to know more about time based media art conservation. And it end up that we have this Fullbright Scholar program, which is called Nonacademic Cultural Professionals. Usually Fullbrighters have to be someone, like a more academic PhD student or professor. But this program allows me to, as a professional independent researcher to apply it. At least three month visiting whichever places in America. So my plan was to analysis the time based media professional network in New York City. And the reason that I pick MoMA and Rhizome in terms of media art conservation is this two institution has a total different scale, like in two different, very opposite way, but they all are doing phenomenal things on a broader digital art conservation field. Whatever terms you call it. My strategy to learn things is always to put myself in that position and to just openly absorb and analysis what's going on here. The first three months I work five days a week at MoMA and just dive into their daily life as a conservator. And they're also really welcome for me whenever there is a outside contract technician and artists coming by, I'm always involved and can ask questions and just to get to know how things work in a museum that actually being recognized as time based media conservation team. And that is something quite important for me, not only as a researcher, also as a practitioner, because I think leaving Hong Kong makes me realize that I actually never have a full experience in terms of conservation case. Like, if you tell me which work that I attend in conservation from the starting to the end, no, I don't have the experience and everything that I tried to address through the Save Media project was my own logical imagination through what I learned from all the literature, all the resources. So I want something that is practical, that is real and that offered that opportunity. And also at the same time, I'm jumping then to Rhizome. In terms of time based media art, media conservation, I'm always more towards what Rhizome has been doing. Their philosophy toward what conservation means compared to a museum that has a more older history is different. And I don't think there is like right or wrong answer, but just my instinct goes more towards Rhizome. So for now what I'm doing in Rhizome is cataloging of their net art, anology artwork, and by also learning their overall process of how to accession a work and what type of items and text and property they put on to describe an artwork. And the Fullbright program will end at the end of September, and then by October I will go back to Taiwan. The whole experience, including being in New York. One thing that I think is really good is this whole Fullbright period makes me have a time to reconsider first my uh, future development. And second it's away from an environment that I used to be constantly wanted to change that. And being in New York is away from Taiwan. So no one need me to change. No one need me to tell them what to do. So here I can really, really concentrate. Just see time-based media profession as a career, as other type of career, it's equal. How to say the vibe is so different in Taiwan, I feel like my whole body wanted to react to an urgency. But in here, no. In here it is like, yeah, I can be just relaxed and concentrate and reconsider what is the core thing that actually attracted me being titled as a time-based media conservator and it eventually leads me to not the time based media art itself. But I realized I'm attracted to time-based media art as a unique, complex semi ecosystem. This part I'm interested in. I know myself so well that I know I don't want to work abroad. I love Taiwan so much. I wanted to find my career back to my country. So then the question is, if the system in Taiwan is so un ideal to create this profession, then what should I do? And so first the experience in MoMA does make me realize to be a time-based media conservator as in here, but in Taiwan is a dead end. but then I have to go to like a higher systematic way to find why is it a dead end or should it be other way around but still can do what media art conservator is doing, but not necessarily to be completely like a Western trained conservator. I think because my experience was so limited in museum field but the broader contemporary art conservation makes me feel like it is not only the museum dealing with their collection, it is a communication between generation, between technology, material, cultural, sometimes even economic and what your audience want. So, my plan so far is in the middle of preparing another master system design and management and I'm still not confidently to say will that master bring me to another future completely not connected to time-based media, art, conservation, or art field. That could be like a very practical reason why I chose that. Because that major apparently was mostly coming from like engineer or big entrepreneurs. They need to have someone to solve their inside and outside complex problem. I'm still really care about the overall museum field but I think I'm at the point that I have to really jump outside this box, and I need to completely pull myself out and get something new back to the reality world. Not everything has to be related to art. And then, when I get the tool and other aspect and experience, I might have some better solution to build another relationship with art and also can be beneficial to born digital cultural heritage. Because I think the current museum based conservation for me it is important, but it is only important for a very small amount of people. And if I think about the future audience, like in the metaverse, or just like online event who needs an actual object? I did see. A future that the collection, that traditional practice of so focused on material only a very fewer people on the top of the pyramid can experience. 

[00:42:55] Ben: Well, Yuhsien it has been such a treat to visit with you. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show 

[00:43:02] Yuhsien: Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my story.

[00:43:06] Ben: And thank you, dear listener for joining me for this week's show. As always, if you want to help support our work and mission of equitably compensating artists that come on the show you can do so over at patreon.com/artobsolescence, or if you are interested in making a one-time tax deductible gift through our fiscal sponsor, the New York Foundation for the Arts you can do so at artandobsolescence.com slash donate, and there, you can also find the full episode archive, including full transcripts and show notes. And last but not least, you can always find us on Twitter and Instagram @artobsolescence. Until next time have a great week. My friends, my name is Ben Fino-Radin, and this has been Art and Obsolescence.