New media lights up art world
- Source: Global Times
- [22:57 October 26 2010]
- Comments
Art works in the International Decode: Digital Design Sensations exhibition.
By Wu Ziru
An innovative combination of the best visual art concepts and the most advanced technology created gasps of awe as, "It's magic!" echoed through the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Art Museum for the international Decode: Digital Design Sensations exhibition that will run until November 20.
Organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in collaboration with Onedotzero, a London-based digital arts organization, Decode: Digital Design Sensations received international acclaim when it opened in London earlier this year.
The exhibition consists of 30 pieces of works ranging from small-screen-based graphics to large-scale installations, displaying the latest developments in digital and interactive design.
Among the works on show, established international artists and designers such as Daniel Brown, Golan Levin and Daniel Rozin are represented alongside emerging designers including Troika and Simon Heijdens.
"It is so fantastic!" marveled Zhang Jingyun, a 32-year-old exhibition attendee. "I'm just so deeply moved by the pure serenity during the growing process of a beautiful flower."
When entering the exhibition hall on the museum's third floor, internationally-established English artist Daniel Brown's famous On Growth and Form series is spellbinding, showing imaginary plants growing on a big screen projected on the wall.
Using advanced mathematics to continuously make animated flowers, the artist cleverly leads the viewer into the growth process of imaginary plants - producing new buds, blossoms and stalks slowly and gently. With soft and organic digital images, these regenerative flowers continue to develop and grow over the course of the exhibition.
The work is part of the first section presented at the exhibition, Code as a Raw Material, which consists of pieces that use computer coding to create designs, much in the same way a sculptor works with materials such as clay or wood, according to Mark Jones, director of the V&A.
The section observes how code can be programmed to create constantly fluid and ever-changing objects, with another highlight Digital Zoetrope from the group Troika founded in the UK in 2003, with three members from Germany and France.
Here a bespoke computer program controls the pulsing light emitted from the center of the zoetrope, making the seemingly fractured typeface readable, with texts related to personal living experi-ences in London.
Carefully observing in front of the zoetrope, you can decipher words and short sentences such as "first job," "cold," "7 years ago," "she left," "better and better," together reflecting very vivid individual experiences of urban lives.
The second section of the exhibition, Interactivity, presents works that invite attendees to participate. It explores how the viewer directly influences the work. Visitors are invited to interact with and contribute to the development of the works.
The third theme, The Network, is also very interesting. It focuses on works that make use of the digital traces left behind by everyday communications, from blogs in social media communities to mobile communications or satellite-tracked GPS systems. Designers reinterpret the information to create works that translate data into striking forms.
"The exhibition offers new media artists and art lovers in China a very good chance to observe international works that perfectly combine art and technology," commented Xu Bing, vice director of CAFA.
Xu said that two years ago a large-scale exhibition of international new media art at the National Art Museum of China made headlines, with audiences warmly welcoming the new art genre. Compared with works shown then, this exhibition clearly presents the rapid growth of digital art over the past two years.
