Maps & Media Projects
You Are What We Eat (interactive augmented reality video installation) with Carmela Laganse, as part of the DataBodies exhibition, curated by Serena Zena.
Centre[3] for Artistic + Social Practice, Sept. 6th-Oct. 11th, 2024.
Food is a signifier of heritage and memory, a potent symbol of inclusion or exclusion, and a mashup of cultures and social systems that underlie identity formation. In You Are What We Eat, Carmela Laganse and Taien Ng-Chan connect images of food and cultural embodiment to the theme of semi-nostalgic reclamation as they turn face-tracking and augmented reality technologies into a playful exploration of foods from their memories of growing up in the Canadian Prairies. Our work speaks to the experience of looking back and seeing how growing up in the Asian diaspora has shaped our adult selves. These playful embodied representations also elicit ideas around global food production systems and the obscured identities and labour of people involved. A Sari-Sari Xchange project.
Video documentation: vimeo.com/1019014042
Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanites Research Council (SSHRC).
Centre[3] for Artistic + Social Practice, Sept. 6th-Oct. 11th, 2024.
Food is a signifier of heritage and memory, a potent symbol of inclusion or exclusion, and a mashup of cultures and social systems that underlie identity formation. In You Are What We Eat, Carmela Laganse and Taien Ng-Chan connect images of food and cultural embodiment to the theme of semi-nostalgic reclamation as they turn face-tracking and augmented reality technologies into a playful exploration of foods from their memories of growing up in the Canadian Prairies. Our work speaks to the experience of looking back and seeing how growing up in the Asian diaspora has shaped our adult selves. These playful embodied representations also elicit ideas around global food production systems and the obscured identities and labour of people involved. A Sari-Sari Xchange project.
Video documentation: vimeo.com/1019014042
Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanites Research Council (SSHRC).
Superwalk (two-channel video installation on LED screen truck) as part of the Hamilton Perambulatory Unit (HPU) with Donna Akrey. Commissioned by curator Kristine Germann for Supercrawl Hamilton.
Parkway Forest Time Machines (Interactive VR Dome Installation), 2023.
In collaboration with Mary Bunch, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning (Peripheral Visions Lab) and Ian Garrett (Toasterlab).
This participatory community-based arts project was tailored for the site of Parkway Forest and aims to put immersive media tools in the hands of under-represented youth, both from the Parkway Forest neighbourhood and from Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, to tell histories, observational stories, and future imaginaries.
Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanites Research Council (SSHRC). Big thank yous to the York University Motion Media Studio (YUMMS) @ Cinespace, Toronto, Christina Dovolis (Interaction Design) and Ryan Steele (Sound Design), and all greenscreen workshop participants. Presented at FMSAC2023; Lambton College Round Dance 2023.
In collaboration with Mary Bunch, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning (Peripheral Visions Lab) and Ian Garrett (Toasterlab).
This participatory community-based arts project was tailored for the site of Parkway Forest and aims to put immersive media tools in the hands of under-represented youth, both from the Parkway Forest neighbourhood and from Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, to tell histories, observational stories, and future imaginaries.
Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanites Research Council (SSHRC). Big thank yous to the York University Motion Media Studio (YUMMS) @ Cinespace, Toronto, Christina Dovolis (Interaction Design) and Ryan Steele (Sound Design), and all greenscreen workshop participants. Presented at FMSAC2023; Lambton College Round Dance 2023.
Suburban Asian Living Room in Off-White and Beige (VR) 2021.
Video walkthrough:
vimeo.com/968354497
In her book “Minor Feelings,” the poet Cathy Park Hong distinguishes between the major, spectacular emotions of racial violence, and the ambient, everyday kind of racial experience that is more difficult to see. Carmela Laganse and Taien Ng-Chan (as Centre for Margins, a performative research-creation collective) trace some of the sources of their own dissonant minor feelings back to their memories of growing up in the extremely white suburbs of the Canadian Prairies, steeped in 1970s and 80s western popular culture that emanated regularly from after school television. The sonic element plays with tv show theme songs and sounds of everyday objects, abstracted and remixed in a way that speaks to the experience of looking back and seeing how growing up in the Asian diaspora has shaped their adult selves. (The VR room also serves as the interface for the exhibition -- you can find portals to the other artists' Hub rooms scattered throughout).
For more info on the exhibition: https://sensorium.ampd.yorku.ca/events/renewall/
Video walkthrough:
vimeo.com/968354497
In her book “Minor Feelings,” the poet Cathy Park Hong distinguishes between the major, spectacular emotions of racial violence, and the ambient, everyday kind of racial experience that is more difficult to see. Carmela Laganse and Taien Ng-Chan (as Centre for Margins, a performative research-creation collective) trace some of the sources of their own dissonant minor feelings back to their memories of growing up in the extremely white suburbs of the Canadian Prairies, steeped in 1970s and 80s western popular culture that emanated regularly from after school television. The sonic element plays with tv show theme songs and sounds of everyday objects, abstracted and remixed in a way that speaks to the experience of looking back and seeing how growing up in the Asian diaspora has shaped their adult selves. (The VR room also serves as the interface for the exhibition -- you can find portals to the other artists' Hub rooms scattered throughout).
For more info on the exhibition: https://sensorium.ampd.yorku.ca/events/renewall/
Inside the Chrysalis from Taien Ng-Chan on Vimeo.
Inside the Chrysalis is a science fiction that is happening now. Wrapped in their cocoons, people dream of new worlds... Inner landscapes and strange bedfellows... What will emerge? This 360VR video by Taien Ng-Chan is made in collaboration with Hamilton artists who were asked to construct a cocoon out of common household items, however they wished. Featuring, in order of appearance: Carmela Laganse, Donna Akrey, Leslie Sasaki, Taien Ng-Chan, Melissa Murray-Mutch and Sam Ollmann-Chan. Commissioned by Building Cultural Legacies, The Hamilton Arts Council, for Hamilton Arts Week, June 11-20, 2020.
Thanks as well to The Asian Canadian Living Archive and writer Winnie Wang, who featured the piece in Bodies of Knowledge:
https://tacla.ca/portfolio/winnie-wang/
Thanks as well to The Asian Canadian Living Archive and writer Winnie Wang, who featured the piece in Bodies of Knowledge:
https://tacla.ca/portfolio/winnie-wang/
Transcendent Transit: An Underground Talk for the Subway Commute
This podcast was created for the inaugural CRAM Festival, April 2019:
"The journey is the destination for this audio guide that is uniquely designed to be listened to while you’re on transit. It explores how your daily ride to work or school can offer more personal potential than just waiting for the next train. It encourages listeners to turn everyday commuting into a creative or meaningful practice by exploring the visual, aural and sensuous details to the material and social layers of place." Created specifically for the Toronto Line 1 subway ride from Eglinton West to York University subway stations. An excerpt was broadcast on CBC Radio Metro Morning (April 4th 2019).
Download the podcast file here (20 minutes, 28 MBs):
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1b24SlZLhxGetjVdqUsrgh3VfvXU7mJaj
This podcast was created for the inaugural CRAM Festival, April 2019:
"The journey is the destination for this audio guide that is uniquely designed to be listened to while you’re on transit. It explores how your daily ride to work or school can offer more personal potential than just waiting for the next train. It encourages listeners to turn everyday commuting into a creative or meaningful practice by exploring the visual, aural and sensuous details to the material and social layers of place." Created specifically for the Toronto Line 1 subway ride from Eglinton West to York University subway stations. An excerpt was broadcast on CBC Radio Metro Morning (April 4th 2019).
Download the podcast file here (20 minutes, 28 MBs):
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1b24SlZLhxGetjVdqUsrgh3VfvXU7mJaj
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The Trajectories of Things (What is Your Thing?) is a participatory poetry project undertaken during a year as Artist-in-Residence at the Faculty of Community Services, Toronto Metropolitan University. During this time, I asked people to tell me about a particular thing that they held dear: a station lamp, a hair brush, some mah-jong tiles, braces for feet, a fox ring. What is YOUR thing? Outcomes from this project include a couple of micro-videos, and an artist's "book-box" that collects the first 22 objects that were contributed (as drawn by Donna Akrey) along with the "thing poems" that resulted.
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What is Your Thing? from Taien Ng-Chan on Vimeo. |
Stratigraphic City is a site-specific installation that features a 3D-printed replica of the Art Gallery of Windsor as the anchor point of a city map video projection and diorama, displayed on a 4x3 (standard definition) dining room tabletop. The poured plaster buildings, made from various items of food packaging, evoke the mundane and the everyday. Audiences are invited to interact with the projection to reveal the different layers, or strata, of the city. There are many strata that make up any city, from the historical, social and material to the sensual and the poetic. Starting with a blank city and no knowledge, how does one go about learning a city? The two lower layers of the videos projected – revealed only upon hands and arms physically moving over the city/screen – have been culled from Web searches for Windsor, Ontario, and from mapping services such as Google Maps and Google Street View, in order to represent an “image of the city” that exists mainly in the digital sphere. The highest strata, revealed with arms waving up above the head, is composed of hand-drawn animations and tiny poems about the time I spent in Windsor doing research. The interaction is also about the physical pleasure of playing the city, seeing the colours of the maps swirl together under your touch.
Stratigraphic City was exhibited at Downtown/s: Urban Renewal Today for Tomorrow, the Art Gallery of Windsor Triennial of Contemporary Art from October 2017- January 2018. Another iteration was shown at the Hamilton Now: Object Exhibition, Art Gallery of Hamilton, from December 2018-May 2019, and at Lumen Festival Waterloo, September 2019. Thanks to Donna Akrey, Daven Bigelow and Darryl Gold (the D team), Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council for all their assistance.
Stratigraphic City was exhibited at Downtown/s: Urban Renewal Today for Tomorrow, the Art Gallery of Windsor Triennial of Contemporary Art from October 2017- January 2018. Another iteration was shown at the Hamilton Now: Object Exhibition, Art Gallery of Hamilton, from December 2018-May 2019, and at Lumen Festival Waterloo, September 2019. Thanks to Donna Akrey, Daven Bigelow and Darryl Gold (the D team), Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council for all their assistance.
SuperhighwaySuspenseMovie from Taien Ng-Chan on Vimeo.
Superhighway Suspense Movie (2016) is a study of automobility, the non-place of the highway, and the strange, frozen-in-time world of Google Street View. With a soundtrack that references suspense and sci-fi tropes gleaned from movies, it hints at fragments of a narrative in a time-travel loop. Made from over 2 thousand screen shots in Google Street View of a drive up the 403 highway from Toronto to Hamilton, this work engages with urban/suburban imaginaries and narratives of dystopian futures, while at the same time referencing what for many in Hamilton will be a very familiar route. This video is made to be looped, and combines a “fly-through” animation of highway 403 from Google Street View with a soundtrack made in collaboration with artist/musician Christina Sealey.
An early version of this video was shown at the Stories of the City exhibition, curated by the In/Terminus Research Collective at the University of Windsor, in November 2015. It was also shown as part of the Swarm exhibition at the Hamilton Artists Inc., December 2017-January 2018.
An early version of this video was shown at the Stories of the City exhibition, curated by the In/Terminus Research Collective at the University of Windsor, in November 2015. It was also shown as part of the Swarm exhibition at the Hamilton Artists Inc., December 2017-January 2018.
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Detours: Poetics of the City (2012)
Multimedia website, produced with artist-run centre Agence Topo Detours is a collaborative, multimedia website project, taking the form of a series of appropriated and reworked city transit maps, and using video, audio, drama, poetry and visual art to investigate the many ways of mapping the city. It works as attempts to relate stories, narratives, and human perspectives back into the map. In collaboration with Adrian Gorea, Lance Blomgren, Gord Allen, Samuel Thulin, Emilie O'Brien, Donna Akrey, and participants of Accés Culture Montreal's "cultural mediation" workshops, as part of the 2012 Biennale internationale d'art numérique. |
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L'Acadie Fence (2012)
Digital photo collage / essay An extremely long photo-collage that documents the entire length of the controversial L’Acadie Fence in Montréal. An early version was exhibited at the Contested Site: Archives and the City show at the FoFA Gallery (Montréal, 2012); and presented at (Re)Activating Objects: Social Theory & Material Culture (London, ON, 2013) The accompanying essay was published as “L'Acadie Fence” in Objects in Context: Theorizing Material Culture (Stephanie Anderson and Cierra Webster, editors. London, Ontario: Lulu, 2013). |
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roadmaps: videopoems
words/video by Taien Ng-Chan music on roadmaps by Scott W. Gray Flash animation by Joe Ollmann Roadmaps is a series of videopoems about driving: Driving Through the City is a meditation on driving around the city at night, lovelorn, sleepless and restless, whereas On the TransCanada evokes the hypnotic silence of driving on the highway. Deer Signs is an ode to the comedy of deer signs in different Canadian provinces, and Flight evokes the rhythms of long-distance driving, the urge to drive on and never stop. In addition, the original CD-ROM included two videos that are not part of the series: the red ribbon and orange. This project was first produced as a CD-ROM with the book Maps of Our Bodies and the Borders We Have Agreed Upon (conundrum press). Thanks go to the Canada Council for the Arts, and to Cumulus Press. The videos can also be viewed at vimeo.com/taien. |
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FILM AND VIDEO ARCHIVES (2003 - 2010)
Highlights include Cockroach, a retelling of Kafka's Metamorphosis; Thin Walls, a short thriller that Toronto Eye Weekly called "weird, Rear Window-esque"; and Heart-ache, a trilogy of videopoems that explores voice, soundscape, and (auto)biography.
Highlights include Cockroach, a retelling of Kafka's Metamorphosis; Thin Walls, a short thriller that Toronto Eye Weekly called "weird, Rear Window-esque"; and Heart-ache, a trilogy of videopoems that explores voice, soundscape, and (auto)biography.