Towers
The ‘Towers’ series paintings are made for the Satellite Project 2022: Security & Surveillance
Towers
2022
Acrylic on paper
Rio Chen’s paintings explore the existence of antenna towers and its means of transmitting communications with the perspective of human’s eye height. Satellite Tower discusses the political influence of misinformation and fake news especially in the region of Taiwan and East Asia.
Same as politics in design, the day-to-day data transmission is invisible and yet indispensable. While we are enjoying the convenience of digital communication at a fraction of cost, there are individuals and even nations suffering from cyber attack and misinformed propaganda. Understanding the realm of the online world became unmanageable when state media intervened in the pool of ‘freedom of speech’. Unfortunately, we are in the age that politics exist in your Twitter feeds, TikTok videos, and even popular Netflix films. When the public distrust their government entities or even the so-called ‘fact-checked’ measurements, it can be extremely difficult to pick the good apple out of thousands of bad ones.
The concept of self-security expands from you and your gadgets (including phones and computers) to the infinite internet (and now metaverse). However, the sense of security originally comes from the physical barrier such as furniture, walls, houses, and borders. We shall not neglect the importance of the devices and architectures that work corresponding to the system of the internet. Rio Chen’s work ‘Towers’ aims to bring attention to the antenna and cell towers that are often disguised as artificial trees or fake buildings in the construction of landscape planning. The architecture that exists in the city and our homes.