A special exhibition entitled “Riding the Currents of History—Four Thousand Years of Civilization and Technology” will open at the beginning of May at the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall on the first leg of a seven-stop nationwide tour. The opening ceremony will be held at 2:30 pm, May 10, 2008. Media are welcome.

The exhibition is one of the events being held in celebration of the 80th anniversary of Academia Sinica (AS) this year.

The exhibition depicts the ways in which humans have stored and communicated information over the centuries, starting with oral communication and culminating with today’s internet era. Combining historical artifacts with multimedia exhibits, this special exhibition is the result of collaboration between the Institute of History and Philology, the AS branch of the National Digital Archives Project, the AS Computing Center, the Graduate Institute of Networking and Multimedia at National Taiwan University, and Axis 3D Technology, Incorporated.

Among the exhibits are computer animations of three-thousand-year-old Shang Dynasty chariots, a “magic crystal ball” showing a clay pig figurine from Taipei County’s Shisanhang archeological site, as well as more traditional exhibits such as Qing Dynasty imperial documents from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall in Taipei is the exhibition’s first stop on a tour of seven major museums around Taiwan. The Image Museum of Hsinchu City, the National Museum of Natural Science, Taiwan Historica, the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, the National Science and Technology Museum, and the National Museum of Prehistory will be the next six stops of the exhibition’s island-wide tour.

The Institute of History and Philology was the first institute of Academia Sinica and was established in 1928. Over the years it has accumulated a wealth of archaeological and historical artifacts.

Over the past seven years, the Institute of History and Philology has been working as the key institution implementing the National Digital Archives Project. Many important historical and cultural relics have been digitized using innovative forms of media and methods of preservation based on academic research. It is hoped that the exhibition of the achievements of these projects will enhance the general public’s understanding of the humanities and social sciences in Taiwan.