Department of Cultural Affairs

An exposition showcasing Taiwan's creative industry and digital art was unveiled at the Shanghaimart yesterday, touting visitors with interactive devices and a wide range of products that aims to add more spices to everyday life.

Titled "Creativity Inspires Your Dreams," the 4-day exposition is so far the largest display of Taiwan's cultural and creative industries. Exhibits from 144 companies from Taiwan are housed in 330 booths, in addition to those of exhibitors from the host city Shanghai. The exposition is estimated to attract 100,000 visitors, and to create business potential for both sides.

This is also Taipei Culture Week at Shanghai Expo showing the best of Taiwan's performing arts on stage.

A dialogue between cities

Walking to the fourth floor of the Shanghaimart, the equivalent of the Taipei World Trade Center, visitors find digital art exhibits from the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei at one end, and that of eArts Shanghai at the other; each with a different ambience and focus.

At the Taipei end, "News and Noise?" depicts this age of information overload with 8 speakers which create various levels of sound walls. It is a joint project of Ho Kuei-yu of Taiwan, Patrice Mugnier, and Raphael Isdant of France.?

Viewers drawn by the 9-meter wide wall of floating Chinese characters walk closer to get a better look. As they get closer, they hear each speaker broadcasting news in Mandarin or French. About the same time, the sea of Chinese characters start to come together to show the broadcaster's face.

Next to it, viewers are invited to the "Other Side," to watch a video by Huang Ning on human relationships.

"The video shows people walking on a beam. They come across each other on it and create encounters just like us in daily life," said Curator Lin Yu-chieh when she gave a short tour yesterday, "the way they hug, let the other person go first, or fight to go first reflects all the possible human interactions in life."

"They are dancers trained to look gracefully as they walk on the beam, but they remain alert lest they fall down," she added.

At the other end, eArts Shanghai shows an array of products from interactive TV, mobile electronic whiteboard, to photo sharing devices. The similarity among them is that they have been proved commercially viable, and can be customized for clients.

For example, the mobile electronic whiteboard can be projected to any wall or table, and the user can write or draw, and finally saving it for further use.