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Taipei

Taipei Metro Installation Focuses On the Hidden Beauty Of First Encounters

"The Moment We Meet" by Hsin-Chien Huang focuses on the staring contests and chance meetings that go down during morning commutes.

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During morning commutes, the occasional unintentional staring contest is bound to happen. Subway passengers will, at one point or another, lock eyes—it's human nature. Though you can try to avoid such iris encounters, one metro station in Taipei is guaranteeing that passers-by will get gazed at, thanks to a project by multimedia artist Hsin-Chien Huang. Titled The Moment We Meet, the three-part installation focuses on the first encounters that spice up (for better or worse) the dreary cycle of endless commuting.

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The first—and flashiest—part of the installation includes two separate split-flap displays depicting 10x10 matrices of different faces. Each block can join together and be rearranged to create infinite facial combination, or stand on their own as separate, individual masses of faces. What sets the two separate displays apart are the faces themselves. One projects the faces of the elderly, the other of young children. According to a project description, the profiles "convey the idea of when we meet, our emotions and expressions spread out to others'." The installation also strives to reflect the Chinese proverb, "To honor old people as we do our own aged parents, and care for other's children as one's own."

The second part of the installation consists of mounted kinetic sculptures depicting close-ups of the human body, each bearing a relationship with first encounters. Close-ups of eyes show the importance of eye contact, mouth close-ups emphasize how you greet a stranger, reflecting "the meeting process as time progresses."

In the final part of the installation, Huang diverts his creativity toward literature—rather than photography. The artist commissioned the poetry of four famous Taiwanese writers (Roan Ching-Yueh, Chen I-Chih, Shiu, Wen-Wei, and Liao Hui-Ying) on the topics of family, ethnicity, history, and quite ambiguously “the future." The resulting verses are placed in intricate glass boxes throughout the subway station, mysteriously flipping its their own pages for the viewer to read.

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Huang’s installation is at the MRT 101 metro station. Though it might not make the occasional accidental staring contest any less uncomfortable, at least you'll know that these moments are happening to everyone.

Images via Behance. For more of Hsin-Chien Huang's work, visit his website.

h/t DesignTaxi

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