A China of Many Senses (Beijing, China)

Project
A China of Many Senses – TASIE Beijing

Location
The China Science and Technology Museum, Beijing, China

Event
Third Art and Science International Exhibition

Date
November 2012

About This Project
Bill Seaman, artist, Todd Berreth, designer and programmer.

“A China of Many Senses”, was selected to be a featured installation in the 3rd Art and Science International Exhibition, held in the China Museum of Science and Technology in Beijing, the entire month of November, 2012.

Todd Berreth gave a keynote presentation at the symposium forum on November 2nd, titled “Cathedrals in Our Midst: How can we live with our media, and what can it reveal to us?” and was interviewed in the China Professional Lighting Design journal, issue 9/10 2012.

This work was documented in the published monograph, “A Works Collection of the 3rd Art and Science International Exhibition”, China Architecture and Building Press, 2012.

The piece is driven by a software engine, written in C++ and OpenGL using the openFrameworks libraries. In real-time, it recombinately composes a library of disparate elements, video and image content, spoken-word phrases, 3d models and musical passages, into an evocative dynamic collage, media landscape and hyper-constructed assemblage.

A China of Many Senses specifically juxtaposes imagery from China’s past and present, highlighting the tension of a country rapidly becoming the world’s industrial powerhouse, while coexistently maintaining many of its ancient modes of existence. It frames, orders and builds with these materials, using a vocabulary and grammar of designed behaviors and construction typologies, diagramming and displaying the permutations with standard modes of architectural representation. The effect is to create a projected virtual space with a dizzying sense of logic, scale and balance – an imagined organic and built landscape at once both regimentally ordered and colossally haphazard, filled with both epic and intimate construction and permeated with history.

A China of Many Senses explores the aesthetic potential of utilizing standard architectural visualization techniques and an algorithmically modulated, database-driven virtual environment to create a dynamic poetic space, which may provide suggestive and often unexpected insights into an incredibly relevant and interesting contemporary condition.