by CbrIan
Sunday, August 2, 2009 by CbrIan
Hi, everyone. Recently, I went to an exhibition at ARTSPACE, “Cao Fei Utopia”. I could experience the contemporary new media through 3D animation, visual projection and photographs from the Chinese Artist.When I first came to there, I was attracted by the RMB (Chinese currency) city video with its interesting background music in the main gallery. The video shows a spectacular island-metropolis visually, where Tian’anmen Square as a swimming pool, a giant panda hanging from a crane, industrial factories, missiles, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower of Shanghai and so on. You also can see the Chinese NBA basketball player Yao Ming on the billboard as well. The ideology of China government pursues the harmonious society to develop the rapid pace of social and economic growth. Also, the theme of utopia represents the vagaries between traditional and capitalist materialism.
Cao Fei has been developing environments within Second Life as an online platform. This is the other kind of audiovisual experience that I wore the stereo headphone to feel the documentary that is displayed on LCD screen, I-Mirror. Both male and females are drawn to ‘hypersexualized’ avatars; the notion of I-Mirror is to establish a fantasy virtual world with the cross-gender characters. It is the mirror to compare the difference between the real world and the RMB city from their hair style, customs and even the social networks behavior.
In the Long Gallery, the part of Un-Cosplayers is a series of large color photographs which accompany the Cosplayers video. Those photographs offer a considerable amount of gender plasticity through the handmade customs. I could see ‘Spider man’, ‘Storm Trooper’ and ‘Hello Kitty’. Those images indicate the effect of globalization that a youth culture heavily influenced by Japanese manga and anime. Also, the video shows the gender perform choreographed stylistic battles. That made me think about what degree the males can use these kinds of behaviors when battling against a female opponent. 
This exhibition will be ended on 22 August 2009. Let's experience the RMB city!
Here is the detail: