I first came up with the concept of 3L4D for the 2004 Fiction Love exhibition at MOCA Taipei. After that first exhibit, I made three revisions, for exhibits in Hangzhou and Beijing. In 2006, another Fiction Love was held at MOCA Shanghai, following which it toured to the National Museum of Singapore and to two French cities this spring as part of the “Animanga” exhibit. Since 2004, I have made nine revisions, including for the recent “1st Animamix Biennial at MOCA Shanghai” and now for “3L4D----3rd Life 4th Dimension” in Taipei, which is a preview of Animamix Art Museum. There are always some changes in every exhibit. It is like an organic life—the change comes from the growth itself. It is change that brings about growth.
The “Animamix” serial exhibits launched in 2004 are a research exhibit that I have been promoting. A feature article in a 2006 MOCA Shanghai publication identifies four characteristics in Animamix. First, the forms of Animamix in popular culture center on the worship of youth and youthfulness. An idealization of the beauty of youth is not restricted just to animation, cartoons and comics, it has created a large amount of diversified and forever-young forms in popular culture, and thus has implications for reality, becoming one of the psychological factors in the pursuit of an ideal form of artificial beauty. The collective memory of perfect young forms changes subtly, and leads to the much-worshiped youth aesthetics of the 21st century. It not only influences art creations greatly, but more profoundly influences an entire generation’s appreciation of beauty.
Second, the narrative scripts, full of surprises and diversity, transform the images into a visual language by making them strongly descriptive. In the digital environment of the 21st century, written description has become more diversified, more interesting and packed with much more information. Through the use of visual language, the exchange of ideas becomes possible. The personified appearances, along with language and words in a cartoon or animation, naturally become part of the distorted, exaggerated deformed aesthetics. Consider modern art, which began to emerge in the late-19th century. It started to develop towards abstractionism early in the last century. Even in modern literature, which relies mainly on linguistic description, abstractionism inevitably influences words and structure, and as a result, makes it hard for readers to get the whole picture upon first reading. Abundant descriptive scripts combined with visual language are the second characteristic of Animamix.
The third characteristic is that the colorful lights in the electronic media provide the opportunity to create an extremely novel colorful visual experience of light. In fact, since the mid-20th century, when electronic media became the main means of communication, colorful lights have been released in the media, flowing in space. In this new century, every child, regardless of ethnicity or nationality, grows up with TV sets and computers. The information and the images they see are formed by colorful lights, and these ubiquitous lights profoundly impacts artists’ selection of colors.
The fourth characteristic is heterogeneity resulting from the interaction and intermingling of large amounts of money, as well as of people and resources from strikingly different fields. A new form of aesthetics has thus been created. Different from traditional art creations, the production of Animamix usually requires teamwork as well as division of labor, cooperation as well as cross-sector industrial integration. This is unique to Animamix. Moreover, the fact that the derivatives offered by the Animamix industry are vast in variety and number, while covering all kinds of daily necessities, expands its output value beyond the artwork itself, and thus becoming a multiplied cultural power. The creation and marketing of art will play an enormous role in the global creative industry. This form of art creation will co-exist in harmony with popular culture in an era with no hierarchy, that is, a new era of Animamix.
The popularity of Animamix has given rise to a new cultural industry that has started to prosper in Asia. Rooted in Asian culture, Animamix is itself a mixture of forms and creativity, and it should be viewed as an original creation. These new forms of creation are being spread to the rest of the world through digital media. In other words, the art of Animamix has become one of the most important origins of creativity in the global art arena of this new century. Digital technology is a new reality; it helps us develop new ways to appreciate arts, and has become vital in visual and audio aesthetics.
Digital information, comprised of numbers, allows us to save, delete, extract, combine, revise, copy and send data. In this entirely new visual experience, we no longer need primary reality, or the “script”; instead, a virtual reality is constructed through images and symbols formed by numbers. This is a process of creation, collection, arrangement, extraction, and separation of simulacrum. The process itself is a new reality. The “Second Life” website, which has recently gained popularity, is a prime example of this new reality.
Internet technology has sped up the development of a virtual society and of digital telecommunication Today, video cameras, copy machines, fax machines, printers, scanners, computers, cell phones, MP3 players, MP4, game machines have all become essential to the information media. They have led visual arts into a new dimension, that of “multimedia.” Online chatting allows multiple layers of thoughts among net surfers, making it hard to distinguish their ideas. The audience could easily shift to someone else or they could interpret artworks by themselves. The interaction between reality and virtual reality stimulates the imagination and diversifies everyone’s personalities. Today, many virtual characters from the world of animation and comics have become active and present in our daily life in the form of a wide variety of products. They have become a third entity that does not rely on the original form, bypassing “Second Life,” which imitates human forms, and jumping into the “Third Life”, where they are immortal. Unlike human forms, their existence is eternal and everlasting.
The relationship of 2D and 3D in visual art can be likened to that of painting to sculpture. With the use of multimedia, a virtual space is formed, where linguistic conceit is efficiently expressed. In digital 2D or 3D, interaction is often required to use the digital visual language. The new dimension, where you can actually touch things, transcends actual existence and simply utilizes digital technology to virtualize reality. Interaction takes time, thereby creating a 4D space in this ever-progressing virtual space. My current exhibit at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall is a preview of the Animamix Art Museum. In addition to these four aforementioned characteristics, I would also like to put forward a new concept of 3L4D: it is the art development of the new century, taking place in the “Third Life” of the “Fourth Dimension.”
The art pieces of Animamix are not restricted to animation or comics; they represent a more comprehensive concept of art appreciation in the new century.
Animamix art is beyond art, beyond time, beyond space, and beyond life. It is a record of the art of the “Third Life” that we create in the virtual reality. It is also the “Fourth Dimension,” which exists in all forms of electronic media and throughout the digital world.
(Translated by Chi-shen Lee& Charlene L. Fu) |
