Licence 2 Draw

UuDam Tran Nguyen<<
Licence 2 Draw （2014）／ Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama

Repli Round #02

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Licence 2 Draw――UuDam Tran Nguyen

――A remote controlled jeep with pop LEDs runs fromleft to right, back and forth. There spreads a grand whitecanvas over the floor, damped, hurt, savaged, violently andincessantly, on which lines scratched by colorful markers
trace and lead the global history of ideological struggles.
Around the “art by public,” an interview for License 2 Drawof UuDam Tran Nguyen.
――Would you introduce yourself?
UuDam Tran Nguyen（UN）: I am a multi-disciplinary artist basedin Vietnam. I work with sound, sculpture, photography,
video, installation, and extreme distant-controlled robotic
art. I began by studying at the Fine Art University in
Saigon, but I did not graduate from there. I graduatedfrom UCLA with a B.A. and from the School of Visual Arts
in NY with an MFA.
I have participated in the 4th Singapore Biennale, andKoganecho Residency, the 8th Asia Pacific Triennale, and
Art Stage Singapore, etc .
I am also a co-founder of the experimental art
magazine XEM . XEM Magazine is a collective founded by
5 members in Ho Chi Minh City: Phan Quang, Nguyen
Thanh Truc, Hoang Duong Cam, Quang Lam, and me.
It is a photographic publication to fill the void of art
publication in Vietnam. We are working on the 6th edition
which came out in December 2015. In this issue, we
invited a guest curator, artist Brian Doan. He is a professor
from California Long Beach CiTy College.
――Would you talk more on philosophical and aesthetic
themes over your works and projects?
UN: These are tough questions to answer. Being able
to address my vision is important for me. I am lucky tomeet great teachers such as Charles Ray, early on in mystudy in the USA. In his class, I found the connection ofcontemporary art and art before that. They share thesame principle of beauty that runs through out the ages.
Whether you do installation, video or any kind of media,
aesthetics is always a big concern. Another teacher thatinspires me is Paul McCarthy. I remembered that when
he could not decide on which of the 5 colors to painta sculpture of his, he painted them all 5 colors that hehave trouble deciding on. Isn't that a great way solve theproblem? I often use the word beautiful. I want my work
to be esthetically pleasing to the eyes and carry several
suggestive levels of meaning if it is capable. I want it to be
beautiful.
――For you, does the word “beautiful” designate therichness of its inner contexts, which includes the dynamismof the history of the world? Rather than formalistic
proposition of the thing, deformation or disorder is more
important for your works?
UN: I am an admirer of Bach music. In the BBC videoseries of Great Composers , I remmbered somebody
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Licence 2 Draw （2016）／ FACTORY Contemporary ART CENTER, Saigon

talking about the richness in context and content of hismusic. Maybe it is what I am looking for. Those experts
explain Bach's music is layer upon layers, variation uponvariations, so rich, so dense yet still elegant and heavenly
bound. His music is like a huge carpet made up of many
independent precious color threads and texture. That's forme beautiful. I like how you use the words “dynamism of
the history of the world.” One can only hope his/her works
speaks to a large audience. As the jeep robot carries a pencrisscrossing the canvas from ten thousands of kilometeraway from the drawer, a new kind of drawing is being madeby the public from all over the world. As if you have a flight
map, signals from Licence 2 Draw users fly around the globe
to Singapore and from Singapore to Yokohama. Something
Jackson Pollock can only dream of in his life-time.
The randomness, intentional, local, imprecision, as
for the License 2 Draw , public, illegal, the turn over of thejeep, the run out of ink, the up & down of the internet, 24
hours a day, 7 days a week, continuous 3 months runningfor the installation night and day, the software app, thevarious users from many parts of the worlds, the break
down of the machines, the laser beams, the mystery of
the cloud, the invisible signals that sent from somewhere
to move the robot, to turns the hands of the sculptures,the idea of hacking, the circles on the sands, the shock
because of its sudden movement, etc. International
Drawers are also not aware that they are rubbing the floorof an old brothel in Koganecho Bazaar onto a canvas withmany color pens. That is what I think is beautiful.
It is like firing a rocket from a drone and being called
surgical strike even though it does not only kill the person
the rocket wants to kill, but people around him/her. Thatis randomness, or “disorder” (in your word). The work
is on 24/7 because that is how the drones operated in
Afghanistan or Yemen. Before one drone leaves, the next
one will come in to fill its spot. This constant-on war reflects
in the constant lit installation. Those lights are on 24/7
for 3 months. When one participant Skype-calls License
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Licence 2 Draw （2014）／ Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama
DiagramLicence 2 Draw （2014）／ Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama

2 draw , his/ her Skype will open up a window showing
the drawing and the jeep robot waiting. The participant/drawer can see what they draw in real time, night and day.
The app License 2 Draw is available for free on both the
iOS and Android platform. Working with the system to do
somewhat illegal activities, crossing borders into Japan todraw in Yokohama. That is what I think beautiful.
――Let us look back the history of music with Bach, whoconstructed the new order of the history of the musicat the time in the Baroque era. His art of counterpoint
integrated the precedent ways of counterpoints basedon the Gregorian mode and provided the tonality withmajor and minor modes. The lines or the motives of his
works might have sometimes sounded very dissonantand chaotic to the audience at the time as the lines or the
harmonies are extracted from the mixtures of the lines ofmotives from different localities, English, French, Italian, as
well as German. The lines or motives of The Art of Fugue
represented the new political order of the Baroque era: theWestphalian sovereignty. The colorfulness or richness of hismusic comes from the collision of the lines of motives fromdifferent localities. There appears a statement (motives) andthen anti-statement (inversion), or questioning (retrograde)and re-questioning (retrograde invasion), and this systemof dialectics among the lines or motives created a transitory

state of harmony (tonality).
And Jackson Pollock's all-over from action painting
also integrated the history of perspectives into a pureflatness, the medium specificity of painting that lasted
long in the western. Through the mode of painting called
the Abstract Expressionism, the lines appeared from his
unconsciousness and emotions and thus strongly rooted
in the history of the United States of America, the newcontinent that the Spanish discovered and the English andFrench colonized by conquering the native people, andthat then flourished its victory over the two world wars. As
Clement Greenberg vindicated, the flatness composed ofthe dribbled or splashed lines objectively overcomes thewestern Cubist or Expressionist approach by engulfing
the traditional Mexican wall painting and developing into
the optical illusions. The lines of Number One represent the
victorious new order of the United States of America that
initializes the capitalism to the globalization: the multiculturalstate. As with same with the music of Bach and the paintingof Pollock, the remotely multi-controlled machines in License

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2 Draw discover a new system of drawing: the momentary
way of drawing with others in global.
Would you explain about your exhibition and projectin Japan?
UN: In 2014, artist curator Nguyen Nhu Huy invited me to
Licence 2 Draw――UuDam Tran Nguyen

The Lisence 2 Draw installation in details
at the FACTORY CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER
License 2 Draw project is a complex high-tech low-tech artwork installation. It is
designed around the idea that we can control anything from anywhere in the world
remotely. If so, why don't we execute a drawing with an equivalent remote-controlled
technology 10 of thousands of kilometers away from it?
The central of the work is a square canvas 6m x 6m on the floor. Four meters directly
above, in the middle of that canvas is a webcam that connect to Skype app 24 hours a day,
7 days a week. The webcam aims directly at the canvas below to capture any movement of
the drawing robot. On the canvas is a drawing robot.
There is an app developed a License 2 Draw app for this project. It is available on
Google Play store and Apple iTunes Store. Anyone can download the free License 2 Draw
app and use it to move the drawing robot on the canvas in Sai Gon.
Licence 2 Draw （2014）／ Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama

meet the by Koganecho Bazaar staff on their visit to Viet
Nam. After that, I worked directly with curator Makiko
Hara to realize my new project License 2 Draw . This is a

app CAN draw from anywhere in the world on a canvasin Yokohama 24/7 for 3 months with real pen in real time.
This work inspired by the distance-controlled technology
in contemporary warfare. Each time License 2 Draw appof drone war. Crosshair in laser-guided weapons, thetargets under that crosshair, etc. In addition, the 4-pen
newly designed robot will carry 6 laser crosshairs shooting
out in 6 directions. As the robot moves on the canvas, the6 laser beams will move with it, scan the whole room. The
combination of laser beams that shoot out to the 6 sides,
onto the ceiling and the floor will sum up the volume ofthe exhibition space. It will deliver the feeling that theroom and anybody in it are in the crosshair of the moving
robot. It is a needed addition to License 2 Draw . That is
the robot you see in the Factory Contemporary Art Center
now: SAIGON EVOLUTION 2 robot.

user press a button on their smart phones, it will senda signal to a cloud server in Singapore. The server will
direct that signal to the Jeep robot that carries a pen in
Yokohama and tell the robot which direction to move.
Three months later, License 2 Draw since has gone――The lines drawn by the robotic artwork like a jeep
are similar to traces of tires, complicated wirings or multilayered network system of optical lines. How do you see thelines drawn by people from different areas on the globe?
There were three installations related to License 2 Draw .

on to win the Jury Selection prize of the prestigious 18th
Japan Media Art Festival in 2014.
In preparing for the Japan Media Art Festival
exhibition, I developed the second-generation robot
called: Saigon Evolution. The need to add the lasercrosshair element to License 2 Draw robot suddenly dawn

UN: I love watching the flight map of the world airlines aswell as ocean shipping lines. It shows the abstract trace ofhuman activities over a period of time. In this work, I thinkof those lines as a global system of digital signal madeby people from all over the world using my app License“high-tech” robotic artwork that viewers can access andcontrol 24 hours a day via their smartphones for 3 months
in Yokohama. License 2 Draw enables viewers to draw on
a surface ten of thousands kilometers away from them.
Anyone with Android and iOS devices and License 2 Drawon me. From the time in Yokohama, I kept working on thework and I had the feeling that it needs something. Laserbeam or crosshair seems so obvious now but it has neveroccurred to me before when watching several video clips
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2 Draw . Like a flight path on the sky map, it is made by
as many people who “fly” across the globe by wifi signals
via Internet optical cable or satellites to participate in
my License 2 Draw event in Yokohama or SaiGon. It is
unprecedented that this is an artwork by the public and05

The new drawing instruments is an Robot with mecanum wheels designed to received
Wifi signal sent from any License 2 Draw app users in the world. It can hold 4 pens ofdifferent colors and sizes. This drawing Robot is connected to a 24/7 power cable that hasa retractable mechanism. The drawing instrument is equipped with 6 crosshair-lasers thatbeam red laser light that to 6 directions of the installation space it is in.
When first walking in, viewers will see a License 2 Draw Download Center where they
will be instructed to download the License 2 Draw app by video or printed materials. They
can also take home the printed leaflets and postcards that has Instructions on how to use
the app. With these instructions, they can draw on the canvas in Saigon, shoot laser ormove the sculptures’ hands from their places in the world.
To view the canvas and the drawing instrument in real time, there is a webcam thatconnects to a Mac computer. This computer runs the Skype app 24/7. This Skype app is
set to accept a call automatically. Anytime of day or night, when a caller video-Skype calls
License2Draw, he/she will automatically connect to that webcam. Then, he/she can see
the drawing robot on the floor and commands its movements by their smartphones in realtime. With that setup, he/she can also hear the sound of the location while observing theirdrawing work from anywhere. The canvas will be constantly lit so we can see it day andnight from anywhere in the world via Skype.

License 2 Draw Instruction video can be viewed here:
https://vimeo.com/103691467

Licence 2 Draw （2014）／ Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama
Instruction
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Licence 2 Draw――UuDam Tran Nguyen

Licence 2 Draw （2014）／ Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama

also public art. But I want to emphasize the first part. I
present a blank canvas and an extreme remote-controlled
robot carries 4 pens. The public is the real creator here.
The work links people together. It is also a public message
board without any censorship. Are we not linked by
optical lines each day via the Internet, e-mail, chat andvideo across space via satellites and oceans with cables?

License 2 Draw is enabled by such connections.
This is a work that progressed from one work I
published in XEM , titled How to turn a motorbikes 180
degree . In that, I want to capture the lines of dirt made by
motorcycles tires in Vietnam. With License 2 Draw , I wantto take it to another level, global scale. It is a drawing that
responses to the remote-controlled technology being usedin contemporary warfare. The removal of a physical soldier
at a war scene gives me a sense of discomfort. War is likea game now with deadly consequences. I wanted to dosomething about it. I had these thoughts for a few years
before making it into reality with this License 2 Draw work.
If one can kill from such an extreme distance, why not draw
or do something creative from such an extreme distance?
In License 2 Draw , there are 3 sculpture works that
can also be controlled by the License 2 Draw app. They are
named One Target , Two Targets and 3 Targets: I wannatake care of your Zen garden . They are 3 unique shapes,
deep frames that built in the form of a coliseum. Each time
one presses a corresponding button on the phone, One
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Target , Two Targets , or Three Targets ' hands will move incircles. Each hand carries a numbers of crayons or plastic
brushes that draw circles on the wood, flexi glass or sandrespectively. More importantly, these works also can becontrolled by anyone with the License 2 Draw app fromanywhere in the world. The sand of the Three Targets is
inspired by my fascination with Zen gardern of Japan.
In Koganecho, the brothel where I installed mywork License 2 Draw is also an inspiration. The house is
a combination of 2 adjoining smaller brothels. The staff
broke the separating wall and unfloor one part of it. The
scene looks like a war zone a bit already. This gave me thefreedom to “destroy” more what I don't need and keep
what I want for the installation.
――In the time of information war, people lose their faces
and are covered with anonymous data of their profilesuch as age, sexuality, religion, and locality. The massive
destruction weapon targets the data itself, not the people
themselves, and ABC (Atomic, Biological, and Chemical)
weapons stalk and suddenly erase their existence. Though
Jean Baudrillard said the war did not take place, today the
war is always and already taking place on the display of
personal computers. Also, in daily life, attacking the otherswith iOS and Android is quite usual battles, flaming in thethreads of Social Networking System. Somebody writes andposts the images of others with anger or hatred to attackand exclude the very next to the well-looking sites that07

Licence 2 Draw （2014）／ Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama
One Target

Licence 2 Draw （2014）／ KKoganecho Bazaar, Yokohama
Two Targets

celebrates some new-born babies or gods, etc. License 2
Draw represents the incessant struggles of the history in the
global information age. The struggles are rather invisible
and immaterial, inside the mind, surrounded by the global
network system. Why do you have the title “target” on eachof your installation?
UN: Each of us is a target. We are targets of an ads,
target of a commercial, target of hackers, hate mails,
sexting, digital picture blackmail, scams, others, etc. Morephysically, in warfare, when we are under the crosshair,
we are targets for physical annihilation.
License 2 Draw was inspired in part by that remotecontrolled warfare. It uses and activates, enables the manyother minds to participate in the big mind, the cloud, thatlink their devices with my License 2 Draw app to reachthe target in Saigon. In return, we are targets of the app
publisher and the company that host it and the othercompanies that are hungrily harvesting that information.
As with its name License 2 Draw , users are required to buy
the license to participate in License 2 Draw . By accepting
its conditions, you become a target. With that, we arecoming onto a more juicy idea: cyber warfare.
The three sculptures are also remote-controlled
robotic sculpture that you can command with yoursmartphones from anywhere. The three sculptures,
shaped in ways of coliseums, show that we are
simultaneously the spectators and the participants. The
sculptures commenting on the nature of privacy being
easily invaded in our time. These violations of privacy
could come in the form that we are being watched by
be a hacker on our own laptop when our devices arebeing compromised. We could be spectator on the seatsof the coliseum or participants in its arena. Inside eachframe, there are a number of motors and arms that can be
activated with a touch of a button on your smartphones
from anywhere in the world. These motors and arms areconnected with an Arduino electronic board and a WiFi
card to let it communicate with License 2 Draw app users.
Edward Snowden said that the NSA (National Security
Agency) employee might be passing around your nude
pictures. That is a reality. Nude pictures of celebrity were
hacked on Apple cloud not so long ago is a good example.
Never before that we think we will voluntarily submitted
our information to a company such as Facebook. Now we
do it happily.
Each sculpture has an IP camera that let viewers see
the moving hands of the sculpture itself from afar.
One Target has one motor, one moving arm withcrayons and an electronic. It is in rounded shape. The onearm make one target drawing that fills the entire surfaceof the sculpture. It is mounted on wall.

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Two Targets has 2 motors, 2 moving arms withcrayons. The two arms move in circles making target
drawing on Plexiglas box. It is hang in the middle of theroom so one can see the whole working mechanism of it
from front and back.
Three Targets has three motors and has the longest
name: I wanna take care of your Zen garden . The drawing
surface of the sculpture is sand. It is inspired by theJapanese Zen garden. The title evoked the eerily sense ofyour privacy being invaded, your devices being hacked bya stranger.
The three sculptures present the nicest way of being
intruded. Unlike recent disastrous Sony hacked by
North Korea, when somebody presses a button on the
License 2 Draw app, it will activate the sculptures in somecollector's house. The arms will move and draw. He or
she knows then that someone in some parts of the world“hacked” their sculptures. It is a bit strange and friendly asa hello even though one can be startled by that sudden
movement of the arms in the most unexpected moment.
That is what I think is the beauty of the work. That
Licence 2 Draw――UuDam Tran Nguyen

Licence 2 Draw （2014）／ Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama
Three Targets：I wanna take care of your Zen garden

connection to someone in the world that you don't know.
Here, the word beauty again.

License 2 Draw and the sculptures go together
very well. The issue of being surveyed from above anddestroyed, the invasion of privacy, the remote-controlled
technology and cyber war are intertwined. The works
are very “now.” I think they can be stand-alone works ordisplayed together.
――Information warfare seems to be the guerilla
war in which people can not see their enemies andeven hide themselves or escape from being targeted.
Communication is filled with noises to hack and destroy
the system of the personal computer: the disorderedsystem of understanding in the human brain. The basis of
the moral or common sense is fragmented and edited in
the chaos of data, the matrix of the god in the informationage. The thinking process runs out of control in the brainof people and sensation would not be expressed properly,
driving people toward crazy or depression. The worldpolitics and daily exercise of the human right now is quite
dependent on the “demo-crazy,” not “demo-cracy.” Thestruggles of madness against madness are the resource ofthe contemporary cyber warfare. Once people are shot by
a virus from the data of viral code or marketing, they lose
their mind and rush to shoot or erase the others ― the viralbears the rival. Friends become enemies at any moment.
This precarious relationship among people augments agreat number of paranoia and schizophrenia.
Without any substantial weapon, people areunknowingly surrounded by their enemies, who delete
or insult him or her in flaming of chatting. The images ofsacrifice executed by some religious chauvinists under thename of God or Religion flow and accumulate to evoke theagony and hatred toward the other successive slaughters.
The installations of License 2 Draw can be seen as a fieldof struggle over which “war machine” in the information
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age comes across: a tool for the nomadic people to resist
the control by any religious, ideology and belief as Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari described in their A Thousand
Plateaus . Drawing lines to occupy the land and/or avoid
being occupied, the white sheet on the ground in the
exhibition space, the robotic art of the License 2 Draw
represents the invisible remote controls of politicians,gurus, or leaders which are played with the software app by
the participatory audience. The circle or the “Enso” in Zen
Buddhism bears chaotic dynamism in the License 2 Draw :circles are drawn by the desire or the will of the remoteparticipants (One Target ), occupy, overlap and invade eachother (Two Targets ), then represents the stone garden of
the ongoing struggles (Three Targets: I wanna take care ofyour Zen garden ).
Vietnam is a quite singular nation with its bloody
history of struggles and ideology: communism. How doyou see the history of Vietnam?
UN: Vietnam has a bloody history for sure. It is like
Afghanistan that has been the crossroads of the ancientworld. Located on the crossroads of South East Asia,
Vietnam has been crossed over by many powers. That is
her history. It has been “visited” by the Chinese, French,
Japanese, American, South Korea and its coalition during
the Vietnam War. Vietnam went from a feudal system tocolonialism, to capitalism, to communism and back tocapitalism in the span of less than 100 years.
I live through two wars, the Vietnam War or also
called the American War (ended in 1975, according
to the Vietnamese government) and the war with the
Khmer Rouge (1978). Such war history has lasting impacts
over the economy, culture, immigration, and politics
of Vietnam. I think those things affected me and other
Vietnamese differently. But in my generation, it has aconsiderable impact. An Indonesian friend and curator
Agung Hujatnikajennong pointed that out in a talk with
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Licence 2 Draw （2016）／ FACTORY Contemporary ART CENTER, Saigon

me recently.
Even I myself think that history is lurking somewherein my Vietnamese psyche and influence my work. It mustbe, I guess. I think history probably can be approachedwith care since it can simplify an artwork too much to thepoint that the work is only an illustration of that history
in some sense. License 2 Draw has little to do with theVietnam War but mainly with the recent wars in Yemen,
Pakistan, and Afghanistan where drones are being used
remotely. The work could be a naïve mimic of the supersophisticated technology remote-controlled wars.
――The white canvas spread over the ground was swellingand caving, so that the robot was like a jeep running overa white wild desert. Looking back the history of the houseof prostitution in the read-light district of Yokohama, howmany times physical and mental insults were repeated? The
land of Vietnam that had been intruded in the World Wars
and others during the twentieth century by France, China,
Soviet Union, United States, and Japan had lived its historyof being insulted. The history of the nation is constituted by
the succession of the events of intrudes and massacres. As
rapidly visualized under the globalization of the information
capitalism and the science and technology, while people
aggressively express their thoughts, belief, and desires, thestate of the nation and terrorist organization justify throughcontrolling the expressions their malicious actions of
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intruding and massacring.
The lines that the robots of License 2 Draw in being
controlled by people over the national boarder appear
to be excursions of airliners and warplanes, rays of laser
weapons emitted from remote lands and skies, routes ofcommunication composing information network systems,
and traits of the blood flowing out of people's body. The
mixture of the apocalyptic lines can be seen as the abstract
painting expressed by the political systems over the worldor the psychological system of the human being. The redthat comes from sun, blood, and communism; blue fromliberty, fidelity, and sky; green from national land, forest,
and religion; yellow from glory, hope, and revolution; whitefrom sacred, and purity; black from darkness and god. In thework, the colors and forms, the symbol of the nationalism
and ideology are nullified in war, conflicts, fighting, guerrilla,
terrorism and the political community of solidarity andalignment of people are dismantled. Licence 2 Draw isinstalled in the white ground set at a corner of the red-light
district and represents the status-quo of struggles over theworld history and the national flag toward future.
Looking to the artists in Vietnam and Asia, The Propeller
Group fuses the audio-visual experience transcending
borders on nationalities, social layers, aesthetic contexts,
medium, and methodologies. Tiffany Chung and Dinh Q
Le trace through helicopters and their routes the history
Licence 2 Draw――UuDam Tran Nguyen

of colonization in Viet Nam. On the other hand, Kiri Dalena

Personally, needless to say, I was influenced by themultiplies the connotation of messages of protestation
with the white board in the demonstration, and Võ An

contemporary artists that I had worked with, like Tomohisa
Ishizuka, Shujiro Murayama, and Yoshinori Niwa. On the

Khánh disguises invaded people with white clothes. And

other hand, from wider perspective, On Kawara, Tadashi

the Zero Station that Nguyen Nhu Huy initiates indicates,

Kawamata, Tatsuo Miyajima are grand to think more of.
But concerning the historical and political interests, Jun

the “Action Painting” on the white cloth set on the ground ofLicense 2 Draw expresses the cross road of the past memoryof the being-invaded and the living time of the impersonal
mobility, or the degree zero, the presence of the history. Three
Targets : I wanna take care of your Zen garden represents the
clamor of the history behind the serenity of Zen.
What do you find interesting in Japanese culture?
UN: My first time in Japan has given me some great
impressions: the extreme and perfectionism. On the bus
from Narita to Yokohama, the beauty of factories along
the coast astounded me. They look so clean and neatas one would look at a minimalist's sculpture. Even theconcrete supporting the freeway overpass looks beautiful.
How precise the doors of a 16-car Shinkansen stop in frontof a 2 feet boarding line mark. The meticulous attention todetails also amazed me.
I took a trip to Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nara, and Kamakurawith my wife. Visiting temples and museums gave mesome indelible feelings. Miyajima's giant Torii gate
surrounded by the sea water, the Senjokaku hall up thehill not far from it inspired me with new ideas for future
License 2 Draw project. The faded paintings on woodmake me think of a drawing device that keep sanding
down a surface. Excavating, I guess.
Kyoto's relaxing landscape and its rivers.
I am lucky to catch the Buddhist Sculpture show at
Nara National Museum. It is a great feeling to see Buddhist
art in Asia where it is originated.
Japan has done a great job to keep their traditions
along with the progress of technology. That's what I hope
Vietnam can learn from as Vietnam is learning to do it. It is
new to capitalism so it is still dazed by the first encounter.
I hope it will get over that first kiss soon and matureintelligently.
I also love the food, people, and culture of Japan. I
definitely learn a lot from my trip being in Japan.
For somebody who loves electronics and working
on a project like License 2 Draw from Vietnam, Akihabara
has given me the chance to complete the work with theaddition of the slip ring. When the drawing jeep moves, it
twists the power supply line. The slip ring keeps the line
always straight for 3 months. It saves me the headache ofcoming in to untwist the power supply line every few hours.
To you, who are the most influential contemporary
Japanese artists? Why?
――Simply speaking, to me, there is all and none. They
are impersonal in terms of the editing and/or critique.
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Kawata and Futoshi Miyagi watch carefully Okinawa, thepostcolonial landscape and personal history. Jun NguyenHatsushiba is well known for his transitory intervention to
the unknown people in the history. Hikaru Fujii and Meiro
Koizumi questions the relationship between communityand history by focusing on the individual action of people.
Shujiro Murayama works with children to draw with raw
plants the nature post-3.11. Yoshinori Niwa questions themode of public with his poetic and absurd plots in the public
community. In Japan, where many people will die in thehighly aged society and immigrants and travelers are coming
in behind rising of hate speech in the public sphere, the art
works by Japanese are worth to see how the country of thedeath will face up to its renaissance.
The exhibition of License 2 Draw in Yokohama would
also be a grand and stunning work to the audience forbridging geographical and historical contexts between Viet
Nam and Japan.
What is your next plan in the future?
UN: I am constantly updating License 2 Draw for new

Licence 2 Draw （2015）／ Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

Licence 2 Draw：Laser Target Shooting （2016）／ FFACTORY Contemporary ART CENTER, Saigon

future show. For the show at the Factory Contemporary
Art Center in Saigon. I present a new work of License 2

Draw: Laser Target Shooting . In a dark room with moving
web of red laser lines crisscrossing, users of the License 2
Draw app can shoot laser beam at the surface of the paper
target, burning holes on it. Sometimes, a lucky shooter
will hit a match and the whole piece of paper completely
burn down. Very exciting and scary. When one hit one of
the three laser buttons, one of the three laser guns will fireat the target and scorch a hole thru it. It seems futuristic. I
am very excited about this new addition to the License 2
Draw family. I think this Laser Target Shooting is moving
into a darker side of License 2 Draw . Also at the FACTORY, I designed a brand new version License 2 Draw robot
called SAIGON Evolution 2 and its app. I am pleased toshow it in Saigon in it its full scale.
Now, I am showing my video at the Jewish Museum
and the High Line Art, both in NYC. I will be in the Aichi
Triennale this year. I hope to show my new video work:
SERPENTS' TAILS in Japan very soon.
―― Thank you. I wish you very good luck. ■［Recorded during September, 2014 - April, 2016］

Licence 2 Draw：SAIGON Evolution 2 （2016）／ FACTORY Contemporary ART CENTER, Saigon
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Licence 2 Draw――UuDam Tran Nguyen

――UuDam Tran Nguyen
Multi-disciplinary artist based in Vietnam. He works with sound, sculpture, photography, video, installation and extreme distancecontrolled robotic art. Studied in Vietnam and the USA. UuDam graduated from UCLA with a B.A. & from the School of Visual Arts in
NY with an MFA. His works has been exhibited internationally in the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary in Australia, the 4th
Singapore Biennale, Asia Society Museum in NY, and RISD Museum, etc. San Art, Kadish Art in San Francisco, the White Chapple gallery
in London and now in the Jewish Museum in New York. His works have been mentioned and reviewed in Art Forum , Flash Art , The
New York Times , Singapore Today Top Pick , Saigoneer , Los Angeles Times , Phnom Penh Post , Vietnam TV and Newspapers , Art Radar
Journal , LA Weekly , Time Out New York , etc. He is also a co-founder of the experimental art magazine XEM in Ho Chi Minh City.
URL: www.uudam.net――Art-Phil
As a creation unit, Art-Phil mainly publishes a booklet Repli , a cultural magazine of art. In regard to art, philosophy, and society,multiple modes of communication in general will be investigated.
URL: www.art-phil.com【 Publication――Art-Phil www.art-phil.com 】
Repli Round #02

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