Department of Cultural Affairs

Photo by Taipei Fine Arts Museum
“The Membrane” was designed by the Whyixd team.

By Dory Chung

The 7th X-Site exhibition runs from June 13 through August 9 and features Whyidx’s “The Membrane.” This circular structure with dark plastic panels is designed to make whoever enters and moves along its narrow walkway contemplate the difference between the real and virtual worlds.
 
The Membrane was judged Best Design at this year’s X-Site design competition, which had the theme of “X-Reality.” The designers took the horizontal line or X axis of an X–Y intersection as the inspiration for their design.
 

Photo by Taipei Fine Arts Museum
A section of“The Membrane.”

The Membrane explores the constant interaction between real and virtual, internal space and external environment, static and dynamic, clarity and ambiguity, transitory and permanent.
 
It starts with the question: How do people use space in order to reach an understanding of the world around them? It then goes on to ask how our observations expand our cognitive boundaries and physical experience. How is personal space connected to knowledge and emotion? How does consciousness interpret the reality of the world around us, or do we ourselves construct reality? Is our understanding of space constantly changing, and how do we articulate this understanding? 


Photo by Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Lin Ping (林平), director of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, stands center with the Whyixd team. 


Photo by Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Design team representative Ye Yan-bo (葉彥伯) explains the concept behind their creation. 
 
Polarizers are integral to The Membrane’s design. These optical filters allow light waves of a specific polarization pass through, but blocks light waves of other polarizations. (Light becomes polarized when it forms waves in which the vibrations occur in a single plane.)
 
The Whyixd design uses polarizers to create multiple layers of light and partially covered spaces within the circular structure to heighten the sense of confusion of the real and the virtual. Many large polarizers are attached to a wall of a structure containing a circular space. As a visitor walks along the walkway, they see how the light passing through the walls changes in strength (owing to the effects of the polarizers). As the polarizers seem to block all light, the visitor experiences the illusion of a solid black wall. The suddenly dark, seemingly non-existent panels make their ocular membranes oscillate back and forth, making them question whether what they are seeing is real or virtual.