Dancing Wunsian's History, Culture and Landscape

The project was commissioned by Wunsian School in Tainan City, Taiwan. The work is a large-scale double-layered fabric curtain which uses generative patterns, shapes, colours and laser-cutting techniques to portray and celebrate local history and culture. The design was co-created by the children and their teachers through dance and play. It is on permanent display in the school-community hall.

 

To celebrate its centenary, Wunsian Elementary School in Tainan City, Taiwan commissioned a public artwork to celebrate the rich history and culture of the local area. YEN TING CHO Studio designed a stage curtain for the school that captured core elements of the local natural and built environment, and its history and culture. Through meticulous research and interviews with staff, students and residents, we summarised and colour-coded six significant historical and cultural motifs from Wunsian's modern history, including temple culture, flooding, sugar industry, aviation, railway and traditional arts. The motifs were co-created by students and staff through dance and play, generated using the Studio’s bespoke interactive software which produces patterns in response to body movement.

The school students and their teachers co-created the digital-patterns through dance and play, thereby creating direct emotional connections with the artwork. YEN TING CHO Studio's bespoke software ‘mov.i.print’ transformed their real-time movements into abstract and colourful patterns. Utilising innovative weaving techniques, the patterns were applied to double-layered fabrics with semi-transparent symbols on the outer curtain. The inner layer serves as an abstract landscape of Wunsian's history; when the curtain is closed, the figurative symbols highlight six significant events in the school’s history. By spatially navigating through the artwork, children, and staff learn, feel and relate to their surroundings, and further comprehend and acknowledge the rich local history and culture.

 

 

Unlike conventional public art projects, the final work is more than a traditional stage curtain: it not only provides a spatial division for the multi-purpose space, used by the school and the local community, but also enables children, teachers and residents to connect with and discover the local environment, history and culture. In order to prevent disturbance while performing, the background landscape is presented abstractly; but, when the outer curtain is closed, the hidden narrative of Wunsian's culture and history is revealed figuratively. The room is not only an educational space but also serves as a public recreational site for the wider community. This project thus became a means to engage with the residents and share their memories of Wunsian with the wider public.

 

YEN TING CHO Studio's ‘mov.i.print’ is a digital interactive software combined with a Kinect sensor to capture and process human body movements. After inputting visual information about Wunsian into the software, teachers and students were able to manipulate the digital framework and interrupt the data by moving their bodies, and thereby create personalized patterns. The Studio team collated the patterns and selected the final configurations, then radically played with the structure and colourways to create the final artwork.

 

 

This project breaks new ground for a public art project in Taiwan, using a research-led approach and co-creation techniques to fully engage students, staff and local residents rather than being unilaterally led by the design team. Unlike conventional government-commissioned public artwork, the final work is a non-static piece that physically moves to partition a well-used school and public space.