Technically, it's still art

Art and technology are not such strange bedfellows as they sound. The hope is the new millennium will bring even more opportunities for their relationship to grow.

Visitors to a peculiar exhibit entitled "Y2K - Embracing the New Millennium" at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Gallery in Beijing can see for themselves how happily the two media are together.

The exhibition, which runs until January 15, is showing 150 works selected through an international computer art competition sponsored by the Chinese art school and some other organizations.

Among the exhibits are 21 award-winning works, representing the approach of the 21st century.

"This is a special gift to the new century," said Fan Di'an, CAFA vice-president and director of the judging committee for the competition, which attracted mainly young artists from China, Japan, the United States, France, Australia and the Republic of Korea.

"Arts and culture promote the communication of human beings in a unique way. As a new representative form of contemporary visual culture, computer art forges a bridge between technology and art. It steps into our daily life with its extraordinary appeal that is beyond regional limits and aesthetic traditions," the art critic wrote in his preface to the exhibition's catalogue.

"Computer art is especially an art of young people. Using this language, they are able to extensively exchange their thoughts and feelings as well as weave their dreams for the future," he said.

Computer art itself is characterized by its universal nature. It is a universal language for artists familiar with using computers in their artistic creations - a great contrast to the use of a Chinese ink brush or a Western oil painting brush. Whether a work is successful or not largely depends on how computer-friendly the artist is.

Universality is also one of the themes of the works exhibited. They cover topics of global concern, ranging from human nature, environmental protection, peace and war, to AIDS control.

But this does not mean that artists are rid of regional and cultural influences in their individual artistic languages. Instead, such influences can be seen everywhere in the works on display. The diversity in universality is what makes the exhibit remarkable.

"Light Ship 4," by Hamachi Takafumi, from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in Japan, was unanimously awarded top prize by the critical judging committee, which consists of 11 accomplished specialists from six countries.

In the work, the ship, which seems almost transparent with some floating dots of light inside, reminds viewers of a comfortable yet uncertain spiritual home.

In a soft texture, another five dots of light - faint but sparkling - hang over the ship like lanterns or stars in the dark sky, adding light and warmth - or hope and care - to the people inside the boat.

If hope and care are universally touching subjects, the form taken by Japanese artist Hasumi Tomoyuki, associate professor of art from the same Japanese school, bears distinctive characteristics of Japanese culture in his gold award winning work "Swimming Birds." Viewers have been impressed by the highly delicate and decorative lines and images which are typical of traditional Japanese paintings.

"Peaceful and Harmonious," a silver award winner work by Qu Shanshan from CAFA, however, is typically Chinese. The work is in the shape of a traditional Chinese papercut that has red as the dominant colour. These papercuts are common in Chinese festivals and are used by Chinese people to express their good wishes for the future.

Taking a three-dimensional composition, the artist wisely added strength and expressiveness to the papercut while increasing the space of imagination for viewers. The artist successfully created a Chinese festive atmosphere that prevails in the work on the eve of the new millennium.

"Computer art, in many cases, have been regarded as commercial. But we find few commercial elements in this exhibition, which is characterized by the creative thoughts and concepts of the artists," said Fan Di'an.

"Besides expressing their best wishes and sweet dreams, some artists also show their worries and concerns about problems facing the globe and humans, such as war, disease and pollution," he told China Daily.

Fan's opinion was shared by Shouzhi Wang, professor of design theory and history at the Art Centre College of Design at Pasadena, California, the United States. Wang gave a week-long seminar on Western design history and trends at CAFA in late December.

According to Professor Wang, what makes the difference in computer artwork is creativity.

"In my opinion, Chinese artists indulge too much in the technical side instead of improving their creative concepts and artistic language. Technology is no more than a tool," he said.

Of the 21 award winners, seven are from China. But none of them won the top prize or gold awards.

Computer art is new in China. This is just the second time that CAFA has organized an international exhibit of computer art. The first one was held two years ago and the works shown there were much less mature.

In the past few years, many art schools in China, including CAFA and the China National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, have established programmes in computer art or graphic design to train artists using this new medium.

Graduates from such programmes are highly popular in Chinese society, attracting increasing number of art schools to focus their education on this new field.

More and more artists in China are becoming computer-friendly, which has greatly changed their lifestyles and increased their artistic domain, according to Lu Shaofu, associate professor of computer art from the China National Academy of Fine Arts, which have some award winners in this year's competition.

''In addition to improving our students' knowledge and skills in handling computers, we need to encourage more creative thinking among the young artists," Lu said.

Most viewers agree that the development of computer art in the whole world has been vibrant and fast, in line with the rapidly changing computer technology and social life of a modern age.

"I can feel the rapid change and progress in the field of computer art. Only two years ago, most artists were not familiar with the new vehicle. But now the artists are very friendly with and more skillful in using computers in their creation. Technically, the art is very developed which even makes me feel very jealous," said Ahn Sang-soo, professor of graphic design at Hong-Ik University, the Republic of Korea.

Some experts, however, pointed out that it is a pity that the exhibition includes only two-dimensional works, which are sent by the artists to the organizing committee by compact discs or e-mail and then printed out in enlarged sizes.

It would be more interesting if it included some multi-media works, which is the mainstream of computer art in the international contemporary art scene, they said.

Date: 01/06/2000
Author: YANG YINGSHI, China Daily staff
Copyright? by China Daily

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