Digital Salvage Project
Introduction
Digital Salvage is a cooperation project between Xun Chen and Jingtao Yang who graduated from curating and collection in University of Arts London.
This is a project about future diagnosis and weather prediction, and we hope to show the audience several major disasters that may occur in the future in artistic ways which contain artworks, exhibition, conference, workshop and publishing. These catastrophes, which include nuclear war, total electron paralysis caused by solar storms, and big floods, which we have faced or have not faced, are the themes of which we hope to encourage creaters and audiences to participate in the discussion. In the exhibition space, we cannot perfectly reproduce the real scene, but we hope to liberate creativity, cultivate the audience's cognition with disaster awareness, and let them create the reflection from the ecological crisis of the earth in artistic ways.
At the same time, this project is a series of questions about the era of digital media, is it a loss of creativity to include human beings in big data and then push human development backwards? How do we produce knowledge without electricity, as we did before? The crisis's funeral of electricity would instantly destroy all electronic money and online system of modern financial institutions. If money disappears from the world, what does art mean?
Digital Salvage is a cooperation project between Xun Chen and Jingtao Yang who graduated from curating and collection in University of Arts London.
This is a project about future diagnosis and weather prediction, and we hope to show the audience several major disasters that may occur in the future in artistic ways which contain artworks, exhibition, conference, workshop and publishing. These catastrophes, which include nuclear war, total electron paralysis caused by solar storms, and big floods, which we have faced or have not faced, are the themes of which we hope to encourage creaters and audiences to participate in the discussion. In the exhibition space, we cannot perfectly reproduce the real scene, but we hope to liberate creativity, cultivate the audience's cognition with disaster awareness, and let them create the reflection from the ecological crisis of the earth in artistic ways.
At the same time, this project is a series of questions about the era of digital media, is it a loss of creativity to include human beings in big data and then push human development backwards? How do we produce knowledge without electricity, as we did before? The crisis's funeral of electricity would instantly destroy all electronic money and online system of modern financial institutions. If money disappears from the world, what does art mean?
Creation 1: Sunspots
publication
unfinished: October, 2022-
This project's initial output will be a publication. This manifesto is based on a sense of crisis as opposed to the status quo. As we all know, in the age of the pandemic, the art world has gone to complement, reflect, and respond to the isolation of communication by building online exhibitions and media network-type works. Numerous media and internet-based art exhibitions and works also encourage us to think backwards. What is art without electricity?
The theme of publication is the sunspot crisis. The Earth will experience a spike in northern and southern lights, as well as possible disruptions to radio broadcasts and electricity infrastructures, during the sunspot maximum. Storms can even reverse the polarity of satellites, causing sophisticated electronic equipment to fail. It's a dilemma in which both beauty and danger coexist.
The solar maximum, when the number of sunspots peaks and our star is at its most active, is expected to occur between November 2024 and March 2026, according to the most recent forecasts. This crisis has had traces.In fact, the Sun just released an M-class solar flare in 2021, the greatest so far in Solar Cycle 25, causing a shortwave radio blackout over the Pacific Ocean.
When communications, such as unlimited communications and power grids, become disappear, a lack of satellites can cripple GPS, mobile phone, internet, and TV services, affecting communications such as radio, military communications, and early warning systems. However, its impacts are not confined to this; modern financial and insurance systems are heavily reliant on networked data, and power outages caused by a solar storm reduce electronic money and bank deposits to an immediate bubble. As we reflect on the crisis, we are conscious of the reliance of entire social structures on electronics and networks, and media reflection is now a theme for us.
The theme of publication is the sunspot crisis. The Earth will experience a spike in northern and southern lights, as well as possible disruptions to radio broadcasts and electricity infrastructures, during the sunspot maximum. Storms can even reverse the polarity of satellites, causing sophisticated electronic equipment to fail. It's a dilemma in which both beauty and danger coexist.
The solar maximum, when the number of sunspots peaks and our star is at its most active, is expected to occur between November 2024 and March 2026, according to the most recent forecasts. This crisis has had traces.In fact, the Sun just released an M-class solar flare in 2021, the greatest so far in Solar Cycle 25, causing a shortwave radio blackout over the Pacific Ocean.
When communications, such as unlimited communications and power grids, become disappear, a lack of satellites can cripple GPS, mobile phone, internet, and TV services, affecting communications such as radio, military communications, and early warning systems. However, its impacts are not confined to this; modern financial and insurance systems are heavily reliant on networked data, and power outages caused by a solar storm reduce electronic money and bank deposits to an immediate bubble. As we reflect on the crisis, we are conscious of the reliance of entire social structures on electronics and networks, and media reflection is now a theme for us.
Sunspots sketched by Richard Carrington on Sept. 1, 1859. Copyright: Royal Astronomical Society.“Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted.”
Blackout map
20210419, 23.45, UTC
This is one of the strongest flares of young Solar Cycle 25. A pulse of X-rays and ultraviolet radiation from the flare ionized the top of Earth's atmosphere, causing a shortwave radio blackout over the Pacific Ocean.
At the exhibition Exposar, no exposar-se, exposar-se, no exposar / Expose · Do not expose · Expose · Do not expose, at Arts Santa Mònica. Photo: © Jordi Play
The text above reads: “During the weekends, we open the air conditioning from 12h to 18h. The other days from 14h to 18h. On the 13th of October: lightening a la carte. We don’t open the air conditioning in the office.”
Back in the art system, contemporary art, like the financial system, stands on the shoulders of the
network and the energy. We consider
recreating an art world where the electricity and network are down.
When the shoulders fall, all of the art system's existing online archives, exhibitions, and records will be destroyed, exhibitions that rely on power will be cancelled, and modern artworks mediated by media technology will be destroyed. That's why we want to make a traditional print, a book. While these calamities are probable, we may picture an art world without electricity and the internet in the event of a solar storm.
When the shoulders fall, all of the art system's existing online archives, exhibitions, and records will be destroyed, exhibitions that rely on power will be cancelled, and modern artworks mediated by media technology will be destroyed. That's why we want to make a traditional print, a book. While these calamities are probable, we may picture an art world without electricity and the internet in the event of a solar storm.