Launched in 2025, the NTCAM COMMISSION is a biennial commissioning program by the New Taipei City Art Museum. Each edition invites an internationally recognized artist or collective to create new works specifically for one of the museum’s most challenging exhibition spaces.
The program reflects the museum’s commitment to advancing transdisciplinary practices, encouraging artists to engage in experimental dialogues across media, forms, and fields of knowledge. It also explores the exhibition as a spatial practice—engaging with spatial politics, fostering public interaction, and challenging established museum space paradigms. Through this initiative, the museum supports artists in realizing innovative ideas and developing new artistic vocabularies and modes of spectatorship.
"Pavilion" explores the legacy of the film "THINK," created by Charles and Ray Eames for the IBM Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. At the dawn of the computer age, "THINK" pictured computers as models of how the human mind both receives and processes information, immersing audiences in a dynamic stream of images, sounds, and ideas. Taking as a point of departure THINK’s multiscreen setup and its distinctive orchestration of audio-visual rhythm, Pavilion revisits this early precursor to database cinema and reflects upon the optimism and apprehension that shaped its cultural context, at a time when generative AI has exponentially increased the scale and speed of data patterning. "Pavilion" integrates filmed and archival material, and uses generative AI to composite footage iteratively. It features new choral compositions performed by members of the Taipei Male Choir, presented in a multi-channel soundscape designed by the Taiwan Sound Lab.
1.
Samson Young
"Pavilion" (feat. Taipei Male Choir and Hsieh Hsien Te)
Multi-channel videos and sound installation (composition for 4-part male choir), street lamp (iron, acrylic panel, LED lighting fixture, electronic controller), sphere speaker (3D printing, speaker driver, LCD)
28:00, 200 × 200 × 423 (L) cm, 55 cm (ø) × 70 (H) cm each, 2 pieces in total
2025
Commissioned by New Taipei City Art Museum
2.
Samson Young
"Variations of 96 chords in space" (feat. William Lane)
6-channel videos with 8 channels of audio (composition for viola, crotales, woodblock, self-playing piano, e-bows on piano strings, electronic sounds, water fountain, painted screens, and custom software)
Duration variable, a full cycle averages at 2:10:00
2023, revised 2025
3.
Archive Zone of "THINK"
Video, replica of drawings, and news report
Designed by Samson Young
2025
楊嘉輝：展亭
Samson Young: Pavilion
｜Supervisor｜Ministry of Culture, New Taipei City Government
｜Organizer｜ New Taipei City Art Museum
｜Collaborator｜ Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB)