Peeking into the city of the future

• Source: Global Times
• [11:08 August 30 2010]
• Comments

The 360-degree video installation at the DCC. Photo: Cai Xianmin

By Nick Muzyczka

This month the constantly busy Dutch Culture Center (DCC) is looking at digital art and new media in the exhibition Adaptation, Designing the Future City.

Chinese and Dutch architects, artists and digital media producers have come together to show how new media technology can contribute to designing future cities.

Visitors to the center are first greeted by the most impressive feature of the exhibition, a huge, 360-degree screen onto which around 15 projectors screen a seamless and beautifully constructed film.

The film, coordinated by the Dynamic City Foundation (DCF), details a proposed eco-development scheme at Caofeidian, a new coastal city near Tangshan in northern China.

The video installation shows the stages of the project using exceptional computer graphics and flamboyant displays. Architects involved with the project flash up on screen at intervals alongside windows to illustrate their examples and arguments.

A central model allows visitors to comprehend the totality of the project, which is full of intricate patterns and interesting geometric forms.

While there are a few people currently living in Caofeidian, its population is predicted to soar rapidly to more than 1 million. Caofeidian Ecocity is part of a remarkable new deep water harbor - destined to be the biggest in China - and an industrial zone with the fourth-largest steel factory in the world. This is the economic thrust behind the large-scale local urbanization, an investment worth 340 billion yuan ($50 billion).

How to build a new sustainable city is the most compelling problem facing planners today. For Caofeidian the DCF proposed a radical new evolutionary design method.

Ten internationally famous architecture groups were asked to plan, not all at once, but in relays, to create a proposal for the Caofeidian Genetic City in 2040. Evolving through stages, this evolutionary process simulates a city with an organic inner logic.

Green conferences

The Mobile City, an international not-for-profit network that aims to promote debates on digital technologies and urban culture, together with Virtueel Platform, an institute for e-culture in the Netherlands, have been organizing conferences at the center.

Bringing together interdisciplinary professionals (from the arts, design, architecture, planning and telecoms), the conferences discussed such questions as: what happens to urban culture when physical and virtual spaces begin to merge?

"E-culture can make an essential contribution to social and economic innovation. New creative technologies are not only changing the way we make culture but also how we disseminate it, preserve it and participate in it," said Virtueel Platform.

"New technologies and digitalization have given rise to new forms of artistic experimentation and the possibilities for producing, presenting and archiving existing art and culture have expanded enormously."

The exhibition also includes 3rd I (Third Eye), a model of a utopian city created by the V2_Institute for Unstable Media, which features interactive robots, fitted with cameras operated by the visitors. After the slick, visually stunning work of the video installation, this exhibit falls somewhat short, though children may find it fun to interact with the robots.

The 3rd I project also connects the space to the MK Gallery in Rotterdam (a city twinned with Shanghai) where visitors can also view the video feed and manipulate the robots. Visitors to the Chinese and Dutch galleries can communicate with each other via specially developed telepresence booths at set times of the day.

Video portraits

Less interactive, but more revealing are the video portraits of the teams involved in the projects. The students who helped to make the maquettes of the buildings speak on camera about life in their home towns and elaborate on how they think people live in their sister city. Beautiful Rotterdam parks and Shanghai rooftops are used as settings for the monologues, which give a sense of both the connections and the distance between these two locations.

The DCC has been a powerful cultural force during the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, managing to successfully arrange and realize an impressive number of different events.

This exhibition, however, doesn't quite engage in the same way as some previous efforts. Although the content of the exhibition is certainly interesting and relevant, visitors may find that they need more information about how the various parts connect together.

Date: Until September 5, 11 am to 8 pm

Venue: Dutch Culture Center 荷兰文化馆

Address: 800 Changde Road 常德路800路

Admission: Free

Call 150-2657-5312 for details