Peppercorns Interactive & Hsin-Chien Huang

Hsin-Chien Huang

Hsin-Chien Huang has been an accomplished new media creator since 1995. His career focuses on integrating cutting-edge technologies with art, literature, design, and stage performance. Huang’s innovative projects encompass interdisciplinary interactions, performance, mechanical apparatus, algorithmic computations, and video installations.

As a professor at the Design Department of National Taiwan Normal University, he promotes interdisciplinary collaboration through STEAM education and publication. Huang graduated from National Taiwan University with two Presidential Awards and pursued product design at ArtCenter College of Design. He earned his master’s degree at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, as a full Moholy Nagy scholar. Huang was a researcher at Interval Research Corporation before joining the digital entertainment industry. He held Art Director positions at Sega and Sony Computer Entertainment. His education and professional experiences have honed his skills as a cross-disciplinary creator.

Huang collaborated with renowned new media artist Laurie Anderson and legendary French electronic musician Jean-Michel Jarre. His artworks have been showcased worldwide, including the Venice Film Festival, Festival de Cannes, SXSW, Taipei Fine Art Museum, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, Shanghai Biennale, Venice Biennale, MoMA of New York, and Ars Electronica Festival.

He has received commissions for prestigious institutions such as the Digital Dunhuang VR Experience, the Future Museum of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, and public installation art for Taipei 101. Huang’s accolades include the grand prize of the “New Voices, New Vision” new media competition, the Muse Award from the American Association of Museums, the title “Pride of Taiwan” from Taiwan’s Office of the President, Best VR Experience at the Venice Film Festival, the Masque d’Or (Golden Mask) Award at NewImages Festival, Honorary Mention in the Ars Electronica Festival, Best Virtual Reality at the Los Angeles Film Awards, Best VR Story at Cannes XR, and the Jury Award in the SXSW Virtual Cinema Competition.

In 2016, Huang co-founded Taiwan’s Virtual and Physical Media Integration Association. He has partnered with the Ars Electronica Festival since 2020 and serves as the Lead Curator of Garden Taipei/Formosa, promoting new media artworks from Taiwan globally.

Peppercorns Interactive

The continuous creation of art and an accumulation of life experiences have led Chin-Hsiang Hu to take on various identities: artist, engineer, interactive designer, lecturer, etc. Even so, he still desires to focus his work on the creation of new media art to examine the over-development of science and technology.

Each kind of creative direction expressed a different idea and required the use of different technologies. In terms of integrating technologies, the development of interactive software played a very important role in his development. He chose openFrameworks to create visual and audio recognition technology, while ActionScript was used to form real time audio and visual effects, and to manage the interactive devices, augmented reality, and motion sensors.

By combining different artistic forms, he built his creative skills and abilities. He continuously challenged himself to create works that form a dialogue between his personal experiences and new media art.

He works form the assumption that though the performing arts, interactive art, and visual art are separate disciplines, their combination can give rise to a new form of technology-based performing arts. This also includes a self dialogue that results in a clash between the inner self and external factors.

ARTWORK

Chinese AI Impressionism: Dynamic and Serene Landscapes
Interactive installation

The artwork’s backdrop features AI-generated contemporary ink landscape paintings that continually evolve. As viewers enter and interact with the piece, their movements are captured, and the artwork exhibits an effect of ink gradually diffusing. When viewers pause, their posture is transformed into a similarly styled ink-rendered tree.

This piece bridges the gap between history and new media and the fusion of tradition and digital technology. Through the artwork, we aim to enable viewers to experience the union of traditional art and modern technology while appreciating the timeliness of the piece. In doing so, we can create a profoundly meaningful artistic work, offering new experiences and inspiration for viewers.

Artwork Link
https://youtu.be/Sf3oa9cM6ug

Websites
https://www.hsinchienhuang.com/
https://www.peppercorns.com.tw