Central Academy of Fine Arts, Future Unknown Exhibition: Scattered Projections, Rabbit Holes, Random Forests, and 22 Interfaces.
Exhibition/Curation/Digital Interaction/Editorial/InfographicDesign as Researching/Design as Creating Relationship
2021-ongoing
digital interactive space video showcase
Future Unknown is a speculative educational exhibition reimagining multi-disciplinary art and design education. The exhibition holds multiple sections from difference departments in CAFA. Communication design took the position of viewing experimental communication design research as a holistic approach to design as a whole, and analysis design as a way of thinking to help navigate creative directions for future students. The exhibition expands the contribution of visual communication by emphasizing technology, experimentation, and discernment. Critically examines the position and importance of visual communication in relation to culture and society in an interdisciplinary environment.
136 Artists’ references are categorized into four quadrants, Image and Text, Objects and Incident, Film and Sound, Space and Experience. Numbers and position are generated from Hilbert Curve, which can be flatted or threaded into a 3D square. The position of all images are relative in the 3D space of the digital experience.
This is both the process and the result of experimentation, both fragmentary interfaces and complete stories, representing twenty-two worldviews behind them; the world is constantly changing, and the twenty-two interfaces flick back and forth like clock, representing the twenty-two seconds cycle of constant conversion. Four two-dimensional objects each represents a media and a visual element.
Digtial interactive space can be experienced by audiences through screens.
Five chapters visualizing the process of threading artwork into a 3D space that audience can explore. 1: raising of the firework; 2: explosion; 3: falling and forming tube; 4: threading and ready for interaction. Finally, the program “collapse” automatically within 3 minutes then forming into Conway’s Game of Life, which holds the students work.
The publication is designed as an educational archive and handbook to guide educators and students in exploring experimental communication design. The composition is in quadrant with the process of digital experience as background according to the time (page number)
The rotating layout of the book echoes the four quadrant of the map. Alongside with the major book, four booklet respectively represent and feature the four corespondent 2D objects that is indicated by the position of the luminous rectangle: rabbit hole-map, shadows-fireworks, random forests-tree, interfaces-Game of Life.
The audience walk into the space to interact with thee digtial space, which holds 136 artsit references and 22 students works in a 3D virtual space. Audience walk inside the digital space to witness the process of forming the 3D archive from fireworks to collapsing of images.
Curational director: Jun He (Associate professor, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China)
Group members: Hengda You, Gan Luo, Jiayu Zhang, Qixin Chen, Erlu Ni, Yilun Li, Qian Ye
*All visual presented is the conceptual process prototype due to publication restriction and delay in the exhibition.