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April 25, 2024

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Home » City specials » Hangzhou

AI world comes alive in digital art exhibition

By Wu Huixin | 00:00 UTC+8 April 25, 2024 | Print Edition

To further explore the integration of art and digital technologies, China Academy of Art is hosting the First Digital Art China exhibition through June 3, showing AI-generated content, virtual reality and mixed reality artworks.

On April 19, CAA announced that it would turn the exhibition into a biennial event showcasing AI-related art that better leverages the role of technology in art.

“In the 21st century, people have witnessed the boom of the digital economy, the iteration of digital technologies and the creation of digital art,” said Gao Shiming, president of CAA.

“Now, digital art has extended the domain of fine art and contemporary art. It has carved out new space for artistic expression and feelings.”

Organizers have combed through the fruitful results in digital art education and development in China during the past decade and selected 210 works from 12,000 candidates that embody top-notch domestic digital art.

Four sections categorize all the exhibits: Epic Space, Grand View, Digital Bionics and Meta Universe. Shanghai Daily took a look at the exhibition and found some highlights.

AI brings high efficiency, new art tools and opportunities for domestic sci-fi filmmaking. China’s first big-budget sci-fi spectaculars, “Wandering Earth I and II,” have been considered the epitome of this type of movie.

The exhibition shows the episode of space elevator in “Wandering Earth II,” in which a total of 2,300 workers and 67 teams participated in the visual effects production.

MoreVFX, one of the leading visual effects companies in China, produced the movie’s space elevator episodes. It was responsible for half of the shots in the Wandering Earth series in 2019 and 2023.

Alongside the sci-fi movie, a 6-minute digital video also catches visitors’ attention.

Chen Lei and his teammates drew inspiration from German artist Käthe Kollwitz’s sculptures and produced the anti-war video “Zhi Ge (止戈, stop fighting).” The film uses digital art as a new medium to call for world peace.

Some artists turn to ancient literature and try to generate episodes with modern digital technologies.

Qiu Zhitao’s computer graphic picture “Havoc in Heaven” is on display at the exhibition. The picture is based on the earliest chapters of the Ming Dynasty’s (1368–1644) novel “Journey to the West.”

For years, countless cartoon adaptations and movies have filmed the same classic story. Now, digital technology endows the story with stupendous details and an overwhelming vibe. Every figure has a vivid expression and body language, creating an intense atmosphere as the Monkey King rebels against the Jade Emperor of heaven.

Digital art is also a new method to bring traditional ink-wash paintings to life.

In the history of Chinese modern painting, Qi Baishi (1864-1957) is noted for the whimsical and playful style of his ink paintings. Qu Feiyuan and his teammates used the popular text-to-image application Stable Diffusion to complete the AI generation film, which is based on Qi’s works of animals, flowers and birds.

The bird-and-flower painting “Rare Fowl Sketched from Life” depicts a total of 10 fowls, two turtles and 12 insects. Huang Quan (AD903–965) used different techniques in this painting to teach his son how to draw flower-and-bird paintings, which started to flourish in the 10th century and later became a very important genre in traditional Chinese painting.

Jin Jun uses interactive technology to build a space in which visitors could use the device to create their own birds on the site, which features ancient painting styles.

Moreover, Zhang Zengzeng’s immersive installation is available for visitors to put on the headset and reminisce about something extremely exciting or happy in his or her life.

The device interprets the brainwaves and generates corresponding three-dimensional data, which it then transmits to the terminal 3D printer to create a unique sculpture.

“Digital technologies are new media, aesthetics and methods,” said Gao. “Digital art breaks the boundaries of art, sculpture, film and architecture, and blends pop art with AI. It helps us extend the world from epic space to the meta-universe.”

Hangzhou


 

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