許家維 簡介+CV Hsu Chia-Wei Biography+CV

Chia-Wei HSU

Born in Taichung, Taiwan, in 1983, Chia-Wei Hsu is currently based between Taipei and Maastricht, the Netherlands. He is an artist, filmmaker, and curator who integrates the languages of cinema and contemporary art to interrogate the intricate mechanisms of image production. His work centers on the material and performative dimensions of the cinematic production process, treating the act of filming as an event in its own right. This approach enables him to forge connections among people, materials, and sites that have been marginalized or excluded from dominant historical narratives. 

Hsu’s work critically examines media as a tool for constructing imaginaries of the world. He explores how technologies of image-making operate not only as instruments of memory but also as vehicles for projecting cosmological perspectives. By reactivating historical documents and colonial-era films, Hsu generates contemporary reflections on the past, recontextualizing archival materials to produce new layers of meaning in the present. 

橡膠球 Rubber Balls

橡膠球 Rubber Balls

三頻道錄像裝置、OLED螢幕、鐵架、天然橡膠布
Three-channel video installation  OLED screens, iron frame, natural rubber sheets. 400 x 225 cm. 3' 35". 2025

本作品由阿姆斯特丹電影博物館提供檔案影片素材作為創作素材

由臺中市立美術館委託創作

This project is supported by the Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, which provided archival documentary footage as creative material.

Commissioned by the Taichung  Art Museum

Rubber Balls explores the implications of the rubber exploitation in Indonesia by Dutch colonists through two major levels of interpretation: the first is an analysis of the original footage captured between 1913-1945 by the Dutch colonists in the East Indies, collected at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam; and the second is the tension of modernity, meaning the discrepancy between traditional agriculture and the extractive colonial model. 

Chia-Wei Hsu uses original footage, a colonial-era novel and audio recordings of a traditional Indonesian musician who plays at a rubber farm, merging historical, botanical and sensorial research with AI-generated imagery. The work aims to create a counter-memory document, opposed to traditional archive-making. The three-channel video installation contains three distinct visual lines: the original documentary footage from the museum’s collection; the imagery generated by artificial intelligence; and the way in which the AI thinks within high-dimensional space. 

The artist drew inspiration from Hella S. Haasse's 1948 novel Oeroeg, which talks about the childhood friendship between two boys, one Dutch and one Indonesian, on a rubber plantation in the Dutch East Indies. As they mature, their bond deteriorates due to the racial and political tensions of the era. In Hsu’s reinterpretation, artificial intelligence was employed to inform the narrative action in the novel, blending historical themes with technological perspectives.

《橡膠球》探討荷蘭殖民時期在印尼進行的橡膠產業剝削，藝術家取用阿姆斯特丹國家電影博物館所藏1913至1945年間荷蘭殖民者於東印度群島拍攝的原始影像，透過人工智慧訓練，創造一份有別於傳統檔案建構邏輯的反記憶文件。許家維結合原始影像、殖民時期小說，以及一位在橡膠農場演奏的印尼傳統音樂家錄音，將歷史、植物學與感官研究交織於AI生成影像之中。透過印尼的橡膠布所構成的三頻道錄像裝置，共包含三條視覺線索：博物館典藏的原始紀錄片影像、人工智慧生成荷蘭與印尼孩童的影像，以及AI於高維度空間中的思考路徑。

沉沒的聲音 The Sound of Sinking

 沉沒的聲音 The Sound of Sinking

混合實境、聲納裝置、六頻道錄像裝置 

Mixed-reality, sonar installation, six-channel installation. 

混合實境長度45分鐘；錄像裝置版本片長14分30秒 

Mixed-reality version duration: 45 min. Video installation version runtime: 14’30”. 2025

本計畫於臺北市立美術館「北美館開放網絡計畫」發表展出

This project was invited to present at Taipei Fine Arts Museum in the exhibition, “TFAM Net.Open｜The Sound of Sinking”.

The Sound of Sinking (2022–25) is an interdisciplinary project combining underwater archaeology, acoustics, and virtual reality. It extends from a series of archaeology-inspired works that Hsu Chia-Wei has pursued with archaeologists since 2018, shifting from land excavations to sites beneath the sea.

The work focuses on three wrecks near Penghu: the Guangbing/Kohei from the First Sino-Japanese War, and the Yamafuji Maru and Mansei Maru from World War II. These two wars, fifty years apart, mark turning points in Taiwan’s history. In collaboration with the Research Center for Underwater Archaeology and Heritage at National Tsing Hua University, Hsu filmed the team’s underwater operations at the Yamafuji Maru site and incorporated research outcomes from both underwater and battlefield archaeology.

The project records real actions at the wrecks, combining archaeological procedures with sonic experiments. Using sonar and hydrophones together with divers performing on custom-built instruments, it stages an acoustic dialogue with the ships.

The exhibition is presented as a mixed-reality environment. Participants enter a networked space and encounter visual and sonic performances: the improvisational singing of the Penghu ballad thó-hái-kua, environmental soundscapes from the wrecks, sonar signals adapted from Qing dynasty naval music, live mixing on the sea’s surface, underwater instrumental performance, and wartime military music performed by digital avatars.

They begin in a multi-channel video installation showing underwater archaeology and sonic creation, accompanied by the singing of thó-hái-kua by an elder from Wang-an, Penghu. The space then submerges:  participants take on avatars, board a virtual vessel, and travel through an unknown underwater port, a ship graveyard strewn with fragments, and a twilight scene of wrecks, vessels, and instruments. Finally, the virtual world collapses in a surge of sound, dissolving into floating digital fragments scattered across the gallery.

When the headsets are removed, what remains are images of the desolate wrecks and sonar devices suspended around the space, emitting high-frequency signals underwater. The experience shifts between video, sound, and sculpture, unfolding a journey from south to north across both physical and virtual realms.

《沉沒的聲音》是2022年至2025年間所發展的結合水下考古、水下聲學與虛擬實境技術的跨領域創作。該計畫延續自許家維與考古學家自2018年起進行的一系列以考古作為啟發的創作，並從陸地考古轉而關注水下考古。

 

本作品以甲午戰爭時期的「廣丙艦」，以及二戰時期的「山藤丸」與「滿星丸」等澎湖周邊海域沉船為創作主軸，這些沉船正是有關於相隔五十年的兩場戰爭，也是臺灣歷史的轉捩點。許家維工作室與國立清華大學的「水下考古學暨水下文化資產研究中心」合作，實地拍攝考古隊於沉船「山藤丸」現場的水下作業過程，並在創作中參考考古學的研究成果。這些內容既是水下考古學，也是戰爭考古學的一環。

 

這件作品拍攝的是一場在沉船處的真實行動，包含水下考古以及一連串聲響創作的工作過程。透過聲納與水下錄音技術，結合表演者潛入海中所演奏的特殊聲音裝置，構築出一場與沉船進行聲響對話的場景。

 

展覽現場以MR混合實境的方式呈現；當參與者進入多人連線的作品場域中，將經歷不同形式的視覺與聲響演出——包括澎湖褒歌《討海歌》的即興彈唱、沉船海域的環境聲景採集、由清朝水師軍樂轉化而成的聲納訊號、在海面上的即時混音、水下樂器演奏、以及由參與者的數位替身所演出的二戰軍樂等交織成的表演。

 

參與者首先進入的是展覽現場的多頻道錄像裝置：螢幕呈現了水下考古與聲響創作的工作過程，並伴隨著澎湖望安耆老所彈唱的《討海歌》樂音。接著，展覽現場沒入水中，參與者化身成不同的數位替身，搭乘虛擬船在一座不知名的海下碼頭遊歷。隨著船的航行，參與者將歷經佈滿沉船碎片的船隻墳場，以及由沉船文物、船艦與樂器構成的黃昏場景。最終，這些虛擬實境場景在激烈的聲響中崩解，化為展覽現場漂浮的數位碎片。

 

卸下頭盔，看到的是海下孤寂的沉船現況影像，與懸掛在展場四周的真實聲納裝置；聽到的是浸泡在水中的聲納所發射的高頻率訊號聲。這是場在錄像、聲響與雕塑展形式之間切換的體驗，在實體展場和虛擬場景間，展開一段從南方航向北方的旅程。

矽晶小夜曲 Silicon Serenade

 矽晶小夜曲 Silicon Serenade

虛擬實境、電腦主機裝置、浮球裝置、拼接螢幕

Virtual reality, host computer installation, buoyant ball installation, spliced screens. 450 x 100 cm. 5 min. 2024

The beach is covered with silicon, an essential component of the semiconductor chips used in various digital technology products. Through a series of processes, circuits are etched onto wafers and then cut into many fingernail-sized chips. These powerful chips are what make artificial intelligence possible. This work traces the origin of the materiality behind these AI chips through their manufacturing process, presented through a kind of digital texture. 

This work uses a game engine to create a virtual beach scene. As the waves fluctuate, several virtual screens on the sea surface play live videos. These videos include cello performances by underwater performers and footage of a laboratory at the Hsinchu Industrial Technology Research Institute, showcasing the CoWoS chip manufacturing process which is so crucial for AI technology. The music in the work adopts an electronic style and was actually generated by AI. Using keywords extracted from the process involving the beach, silicon, wafers, and AI, the AI generated the lyrics, melody, and performance, and even sang the song. This AI-generated music is intertwined with the cello music, laboratory footage, and virtual beach. 

The exhibition’s installation consists of a VR headset, a floating sphere suspended in space, and an electronic screen. The floating sphere gently sways in the space, and the trajectory of its movement is directly linked to the images in the VR headset. This motion, generated by the dynamics of the floating sphere, is projected onto the electronic screen, presenting a first-person perspective of the sphere and its journey from physical to digital. 

沙灘上佈滿矽，它是運用在各種數位科技產品中的半導體晶片的重要組成元素。透過一系列的製程，電路被蝕刻到晶圓上，再被切割成許多指甲大小的晶片。這些功能強大的晶片使人工智慧成為可能。這件作品透過AI晶片背後的製程，回溯源起的物質性，呈現數位的觸感。 

此作品以遊戲引擎搭建了一個虛擬沙灘的場景，隨著海浪的波動，海面上的數個虛擬電子螢幕播放著實拍影片，這些影像包括了水面下表演者的大提琴演奏，以及藝術家在新竹工研院所拍攝的實驗室，這是AI技術關鍵的CoWoS晶片製程。作品的音樂採用了電子曲風，是由AI自動生成，透過沙灘、矽、晶圓、AI這段製程當中所提取的關鍵字，生成歌詞、旋律和演奏，並由AI演唱。這段AI所生成的音樂交織著大提琴樂音、實驗室畫面與虛擬沙灘。 

展覽裝置是由VR頭顯裝置、懸掛在空間中的浮球與電子螢幕所構成，浮球在空間中緩緩地晃動，這個運動軌跡連動了VR頭顯裝置當中的影像，這是由浮球動態所產生的運鏡，並投放在電子螢幕上，呈現了浮球的第一人稱視角，以及這段物質到數位的旅程。