Second Life: Habitat is a three-stage glass growth chamber art installation designed by artists Ting-Tong Chang and Hsien-Yu Cheng, in collaboration with Professor Rong-Nan Huang from National Taiwan University’s Department of Entomology. During the exhibition period, the artists will breed over 8,000 Asian tiger mosquitoes and provide several hundred grams of their own blood each day to sustain the insects. At one end of the installation a set of traps are placed, and, when a mosquito comes into contact with a trap, the signal created at the moment of its death is relayed to a computer, and is then converted into an avatar visible via the adjacent computer installation. Each of these avatars has a lifespan of 10 hours, and members of the audience can control them in a game, ordering them to eat, drink, sleep, roam around, or even die for the duration of their lifespan. However, when the lives of these avatars depend upon real living beings, linked both to human blood and actual death, is it possible for this game to still be considered a form of entertainment? Through the artwork, the audience is led into a moral dilemma in which the virtual and the real find themselves very much intertwined. Pay-As-You-Go reflects on the post-capitalist pay-as-you-go system, symbolizing the ways in which choice is restricted in this new era. As energy privatization evolves into a retail sector, natural resources are displayed and sold like items on a shelf. In the exhibition, fish tanks are connected to a power supply system, and only when visitors top-up this system by depositing coins will electricity be supplied to keep the ecosystem in the fish tanks running. The simple act of coin payment has a direct impact on the survival of an entire ecological cycle. In this situation, does the price of this transaction represent the goodness of humanity or does it illustrate a short-lived moment of reprieve from the condemnation of our incessant inner guilt? Inspired by the death of Eric Wang (1980-2012), a former elementary school classmate of Ting-Tong Chang, Blind Chance invites the audience to travel back to the last day of this person’s tragically short life by joining a strange, theater-esque bus trip. A kind of dark tourism experience, participants are transported back to that fateful day via a sensorial imaginary created through sound, technological devices, and video imagery. As it travels to nowhere, audience members are ejected at random from the bus and must decide whether or not to continue their journey or simply return home, reminding us of the impermanence and unpredictability of the choices we make in life. Cooperator l Pro. Rong-Nan Huang, Department of Entomology, National Taiwan University, Hong Ma Aquarium Sponsors l National Culture and Arts Foundation R.O.C, Taipei City Government Department of Cultural Affairs Photography l Po-Yao Chuang