The author provides a critical framework for understanding the shifting boundaries between cinema, visual art, and spatial practices in the postwar period. This collection examines the emergence of expanded cinema—a term that signifies the move beyond the conventional cinematic apparatus towards more immersive, participatory, and spatially distributed forms of moving image art. This theoretical positioning is particularly relevant to my research, which explores the interplay between materiality, perception, and identity through the medium of the orchid, using both traditional and sensor-based practices.
 

One of the key contributions of the text is its articulation of how expanded cinema challenges the binary opposition between the black box of the cinema (a controlled, immersive environment) and the white cube of the gallery (a reflective, often fragmented space). This tension resonates with my own practice-based inquiry, where I attempt to disrupt the passive gaze by inviting tactile, auditory, and embodied forms of engagement with the orchid as both subject and object. In particular, the discussion of spatialized projections and installation-based moving image work opens possibilities for considering how my experiments with sensors, sound visualization, and real-time interaction could operate within a post-expanded cinema discourse.
 

The book also foregrounds processuality, temporality, and performativity, aspects that align with my growing interest in the “liveness” of the orchid—particularly as I integrate tools such as the Playtronica Biotron to detect and sonify subtle bioelectrical activities. This movement towards expanded sensory registers reflects the postwar artists’ departure from static forms, embracing temporal processes and material transformations. The works discussed in the book, such as those by Anthony McCall or Carolee Schneemann, challenge the singular, stable artwork, much like my own iterative processes of cutting, engraving, and potentially growing orchids, where each act leaves a trace that reconfigures the perception of the object.
 

Furthermore, the expanded cinema discourse’s emphasis on the collapse of disciplinary boundaries provides theoretical support for my cross-media methodology, which combines sculpture, sound, moving image, and biological material. The book argues that expanded cinema is not merely a formal strategy but a critique of institutional spaces and modes of spectatorship—a notion that parallels my research’s implicit critique of colonial botanical practices and the commodification of the orchid as a cultural symbol.
 

Additionally, the book’s positioning of expanded cinema within political and historical contexts—such as postwar disillusionment, the rise of countercultural movements, and the questioning of authorship—offers a productive lens for situating my practice within the specific geopolitical histories of Taiwan. My focus on the orchid as a site of identity and violence resonates with the way expanded cinema sought to destabilize dominant narratives and open space for marginalized voices and alternative modes of seeing.
 

In summary, Between the Black Box and the White Cube offers a valuable theoretical scaffolding for my project by:

1.     Validating cross-disciplinary, process-based, and sensory-expansive practices.

2.     Offering a historical precedent for challenging institutional frames and passive spectatorship.

3.     Providing conceptual tools to situate my work within a broader trajectory of postwar and postcolonial visual cultures.
 

By engaging with the expanded cinema framework, my research can further interrogate the spaces between image, object, sound, and biological life, creating an ecology of practice that resists fixed categories and encourages embodied, participatory encounters.