Round Table: Trends in the connection of performing arts and digital technology in Germany, France, and Taiwan

(Photo ©Benjamin Krieg)

Professor Chih-Yung Aaron CHIU is now a full professor at National Tsing University. He serves as the chairman for Graduate institute of Art and Technology and the director for Interdisciplinary Program of Technology and Art in College of Arts, as well as a curator, art critic, and photographer. Prof. Chiu is also a board member of Trustee of Digital Art Foundation Taipei, and the council member of Cultural Studies Association, Taiwan. He has academic background in photography and media studies, and received his PhD from School of Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University in USA, with double major in visual arts (painting, sculpture and architecture) and film studies (film aesthetics, theories and criticism), as well as a minor in aesthetics (phenomenology). In the past few years, Prof. Chiu was the Dean of Division of Culture and Creativity, and the Programme Director of Media Arts and Design at BNU-HKBU United International College (UIC) in China, he has also participated in many curatorial works including Specularity/ Reflexivity: Contemporary Image Arts after 1980s, Post-Digital Anthropocene, IP EXPO Exhibition, 2015-16 Taiwan Digital Art Festival – Trend, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th Taipei Digital Art Festivals, the 4th Digital Performing Art Festival, and also many international exhibitions and festivals worldwide including Hong Kong, Boston and Madrid. Prof. Chiu is also a prolific writer. His articles titled “On the Embodied Aesthetics of Digital Arts” (2007) and “Inter/face: A Reconsideration of Myth of Transparency” (2008) have been nominated by Digital Art Criticism Awards Taipei. His publication titled “Significant Discourse and Local Practice: New Media Art in Taiwan’s Context” (2012) has become one of the most important texts in New Media Art in Taiwan’s academia.

Christine Graz is a dancer and choreographer. She trained in contemporary dance at the CNDC in Angers under the artistic direction of Alwin Nikolaïs and then joined his French company. There she was able to deepen her teaching and approach to dance through the notions of “decentralization”, “unique gesture”, “abstraction” and “poetry of gesture”. She was co-founder of the Compagnie Beau Geste (Dominique Boivin) and has participated in numerous creations, trying to reconcile this mediation with the problems of today’s world. She is currently an inspector of artistic creation in the Dance Department of the General Directorate of Artistic Creation (DGCA) of the French Ministry of Culture (Ministère de la Culture).

Stereolux (Nantes), which launched in September 2011, is the name of a cultural center and a global project which is also organizing the yearly event Scopitone festival. This project brings together distribution, creation, and cultural activities in the domain of contemporary music, electronic culture, and digital arts. This building has two performance-concert halls, an exhibition gallery, and an Arts and Technologies laboratory for creation and experimentation. Stereolux is a year-round destination for research, support, and distribution in the domain of music, video, media arts, and emerging forms of artistic creation. 

Highlighting contemporary creation and hybrid arts, Scopitone and Stereolux are also involved in unformal networks and collaborative platforms. It has been developping for few years, constant international collaborations and exchange programs.