Tangent Media

Foreword

A straight line touches a curve, but only at an infinitesimally small point—this is the tangent.

The term “tangent” originates from the Latin word “tangere”, meaning “to touch”. At the infinitesimal moment of contact, the tangent and the point on the curve share the same direction. The state of tangency is characterised by a light touch and separation, a relationship that can be directional yet not interlocked. This relationship can illustrate directions through infinitely small moments (as in calculus), while also possessing a discrete potential for departure: at the moment of tangency, the tangent provides an answer, but the tangent itself will not meet the curve at the same point again. Interestingly, the English word “tangent” sounds very similar to the Chinese word for “probe” (tàn zhēn). In fields ranging from astronomy to biomedicine, probe devices help us uncover the characteristics of an unknown object, much like a tangent, typically in a subtle manner. As Karen Barad puts it, they observe and listen with increasing sensitivity until heterogeneity emerges at seemingly void scales. Like a tangent, a probe creates epiphany in brief, sometimes seemingly casual encounters. At the point of tangency, or the probe’s point of contact, lies latent energy that traverses scales.

The exhibition “Tangent Media” attempts to respond to the cross-linguistic interplay between the words, tangent and probe, and views the state of tangentiality as a stance for interdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue. This stance is exploratory and gentle, not attempting to alter the other but containing a precision of measurement; tangency also implies “leave the ‘self-contained’” [1]. The tangency between multiple lines can still serve as a method to delineate bigger cartographies. Tangency grants freedom of action between different disciplines, and in each piece of the exhibition, we can observe the various points of tangency. The invited works in the exhibition construct a network of lines that are tangent to but not entangled with one another, spanning climate change, geological processes, machine intelligence, and human perception. Tools like macro lenses, NOAA hydrophones, water quality sensors, and high-precision 3D scanning, akin to probes, introduce samples and narrative textures related to both the microscopic material world and long geological time in each piece. In a certain sense, “Tangent Media” is an exhibition about attitude and methodology rather than specific research topics; It focuses more on the movement of the observation point itself than on the conclusions of the observation. At The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, a comprehensive institution, the exhibition attempts to introduce a lightly tangential approach to foster productive discussions on art and technology collaboration, on the technological keywords of the Greater Bay Area, and on the agential energies of projects that stay as prototypes.

If we return to Karen Barad’s terms, the essence of measurement are intra-actions (not interactions): the agencies of observation are inseparable from that which is observed. “Measurements are world-making: matter and meaning do not preexist, but rather are co-constituted via measurement intra-actions.” [2] In the context of this exhibition project, a tiny probe becomes the medium of such interactive measurement, trembling at the point of tangency.

[1] Barad, Karen. What Is the Measure of Nothingness? Infinity, Virtuality, Justice. Hatje Cantz, 2012.

[2] Ibid.

Iris LONG

龙星如