Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting: Digital Painting and Expanded Animation

Dan Liu

Human-Machine

Multi-layered mixed-media drawing of multiple figures

“I wish this multi-layered mixed-media drawing of multiple figures could provoke a conversation about the relationship and/or the boundaries between the living and non-living subjects that affiliates the future of our civilizations with their industrialized societies. This project visualizes human bodies, not merely the human postures represented in a fixed, timely manner, but pushes the possibility of envisioning the human body from a biological evolution point of view and beyond - to discuss the relationship of machinery with their creators.As a result, metallic colours spoken for the industrialized metaphors which describe the ambiguities between humans and machines surfaced. This phenomenon could describe not only the robots, with their creations, integrations and destructions, but also us, our human bodies, as an ordered production form.The ideas of German expressionism and Italian Futurism visual arts subjects, especially around the concept of "human-machine," influenced me during the process. For the early 20th century artists, the sentiment of machinery with their mass production was largely welcomed as an exciting era of great human progressions, consequentially had been positively embraced. However, as an artist of the 21st century, I would like to take this "human-machine relationship" more critically. We have seen how dangerously such drastically increased productivity in our post-modern industrialized world had posted deadly impacts, and we continue observing the coming consequences to our future. But ironically, with all the comfies of my modern life, I must confess that I'm also benefiting from this quite toxic loving relationship of human-machine. That's one of the reasons that the status of my drawings in this project would be to serve more as a heartless spectator, rather than a criticizer.”