Frame of Reference I

As a part of the Taipei Biennial 2020, You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet, curated by Bruno Latour and Martin Guinard in collaboration with local curator Eva Lin, Taiwanese artist Yu-Hsin Su’s Frame of Reference I & II (2020) explored how images are interwoven with scientific data collection fields. Revealing the ways in which observations are made and recorded with the eye, in the written hand, by photography, and then by exquisite machines whose output eventually overwrites the traces made by human beings, the artist created an immersive environment using large screens showing pictures from landscape monitors in Taroko National Park as she sought to figure out the connection between image and data, asking “Where is the observer standing in the database?”

For this issue’s cover image, the artist spliced together fragments of her video, Frame of Reference I, interrogating through different technical mediums the human gaze at the ‘critical zone’ where rock meets life.

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