Mineral Crafts

作品賞析

The work of video artist Hsu Chia-Wei has a unique sense of humor and is closely connected with the online community and subculture. In his Mineral Craft of 2018, he collaborated with professional “Minecraft” players in building a Jinguashi mine pit for the game, combined with a mechanical audio guide translated by Google, old photos, and aerial photography images. These together allow the audience to throw off the constraints of space and time and to experience and learn, through a game format, Jinguashi’s history and the way things made from its copper helped to shape modern life. The 3D dot-matrix world of Minecraft and the online community’s joint construction of the scene vividly highlight similarities between the modern “internet of things” and the historical networks created by things made from Jinguashi’s copper. This work lets the audience reflect on people’s relationships with the things they make and on the technological history behind the construction of our society.