Be Sampan

Artist
Rhett Tsai

Creation media and date
VR installation, plate print, 2021

Description
Be Sampan is a reflexive work developed after the artist’s field research in his hometown in Fujian, China. It reflects on the trajectory “from the Tanka people to the contemporary posthuman condition.”

The Tanka people, also known as “water people,” are a historically marginalised community found across many Asian waterways. They live entirely on boats, treating water as their home and traditionally having no access to land. Along the coastal regions of China, they were often derogatorily referred to by land-dwellers as “kuóh-dà̤” (“crooked legs”), a term that reflects the distorted perception of their bodies and mobility.

The work constructs a fictional narrative of Ah Xin, a Tanka person who has come ashore. The VR component presents a speculative film titled Searching for Ah Xin Who Came Ashore. The digital print component takes the form of a fictional text, Deformed Bodies, which re-examines the phenomenon of “kuóh-dà̤” from Ah Xin’s perspective—reframing how contemporary technological society reshapes and disciplines the human body.

Be Sampan is also a media experiment in VR. The viewer undergoes scenarios such as boating, falling from a vessel, and disorienting left–right visual conflicts, traversing an imagined world of Tanka experience. In the third chapter of the VR work, a state of binocular rivalry is induced between the left and right eyes, simulating a condition experienced after coming ashore: “landsickness.”

Using the Tanka perspective as an intimate and grounded lens through which to think about the present posthuman condition, the work follows the artist’s consistent concern: discussions of technology ultimately return to the question of the human. The Tanka, despite appearing distant from technological discourse, embody a form of temporal and spatial permeability that transcends fixed symbolic systems. The act of “coming ashore” thus becomes a metaphor for a broader human condition—one defined by crossing historical boundaries and being compelled toward uncertain futures.

人如舢舨

艺术家
蔡宇潇

创作媒介及时间
VR装置、图版印刷，2021年

作品简介
《人如舢舨》是作者回到褔建故乡进行田野调查，围绕“从疍民（Tanka）到当下后人类”这一主題展开的反思性创作。

疍民也被称作水上人（water people），是一种多见于亚洲水域的特殊族群——他们以水为家，终生生活在水上且无法上岸。在中国沿海，他们被陆地人蔑称为“曲蹄“。

作品虚构了一位上岸的疍民阿欣，VR部分呈现了“寻找上岸的疍民阿欣”的虚构影片；数字印刷部分为一部虚构性写作《曲体集》，该文本以疍民阿欣的视角重新审视陆地上的“曲蹄“现象——那些当今技术社会对人类身体的改造”。

《人如舢舨》同时也是一件关于VR的媒介实验：观者将经历乘船、坠船、左右眼场景混乱等情境，从而在关于疍民的意象世界中遍历。在VR的第三章中，作品通过制造左右眼不一致的binocular rivalry情境，尝试模拟疍民上岸后的特殊症状：“晕陆”（landsickness）。

用疍民这一极度人文、乡土的视角作为切片来思考当下的后人类困境，是基于作者一贯的态度：对技术的讨论，最终都会回到“人”身上，疍民这一看似毫无科技痕迹的族群，身上具有打通时空、突破固有符号束缚的普遍性，从水乡到陆地这一“上岸”行为，实质上指向人类的那些跨越自身历史、不得不前往未知未来的宿命。