Meeting the Future – a collaboration between Tongji, Qingdao, HEAD Genève, and SxV Moma

By Percy Chen, Junior Project Manager Art-Science

On October 2, the Meeting the Future exhibition officially launched at Qingdao SxV MoMA. The opening entailed a round table discussion with Professor Sun Jie from Tongji University, Professor Elizabeth Fischer from Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD), Professor Bogki Min from Seoul National University College of Fine Arts, new media artist Mr. Tian Xiao Lei, and Ms. Huan from London Fashion Museum — five exceptionally talented individuals from different cultures and regions of the world shared their opinions on art globalization as well as sustainability within the art space. 

Percy Chen, Junior Project Manager at swissnex China, signing for the event.

From left to right: Prof. Sun, Prof. Fischer, Prof. Min, Ms. Huan, Mr. Tian

An audience asking Mr. Tian about his inspirations and their connection to Vaporwave, a microgenre from the early 2010s.

The Meeting the Future exhibition has three chapters with each hosting a distinct time period of artworks.

• The first chapter is “Meeting the classics - from Pablo Picasso to Andy Warhol”, consisting of multiple originals from world renowned artists.

• The second is “Meeting the present - from art, design, to fashion”. This chapter displays contemporary works from current artists all over the globe: Ted Noten，Bogki Min, Zhuang Dongdong, Juju Wang, Shang Liang, Ryuta Suzuki, and so on.

• Last but not least, the third chapter is, of course, “Meeting the future - when art meets technology”. Artists XiaoYan Tian, Wuzi Yang, and Miu Ni present art pieces that inspire people to ponder on the relationships between human and technology.

Meeting the classics - from Pablo Picasso to Andy Warhol

Meeting the present - from art, design, to fashion

Meeting the future - when art meets technology

And even before the SV MoMA opening, Tongji University already shared a collaboration with HEAD Geneva as part of the Tongji Design Week events. On September 28, Professor Fischer gave a seminar at Tongji NoCC Center on the topic: The Challenges for Fashion, Jewelry, & Accessory Design in 21st century. With about forty attendants, most of whom were avid design students, the seminar focuses on innovations in high fashion and how they subtly infiltrate into our daily lives.

Professor Fischer elaborating on the Japanese innovation that shocked the high design field in the 1980s

Student asking questions on street art vs high fashion

Finally, we would like to thank Prof. Sun, Prof. Fischer, SxV MoMA, as well as all those who were involved in the building of this exceptional exhibition. Qingdao has been on its trajectory to become one of the centers for the Asian fashion space. We here at swissnex will fully encourage and support future Sino-Swiss projects in this new city.

Experimental Product Design

By Percy Chen, Junior Project Manager Art-Science

Supported by swissnex China, Christophe Guberan came to Shanghai to attend a two-week long research trip with Neuni, a digital design and fabrication lab. On his arrival on September 9, Christophe hosted a workshop and a lecture to share his experience as an experimental designer.

As a 33-year-old product designer based in Switzerland, Christophe works with the fruit of material testings and observations. His interest in design started while studying architectural drawing and was cultivated further as an industrial designer at the Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne ECAL. Early on in his career, Christophe had opportunities to work and produce objects with several leading companies such as Nestlé, Alessi, USM, Steelecase, and Google.

In 2014, Christophe moved to Boston, where he started a collaboration with the Self Assembly Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The lab provided Christophe with a perfect platform to learn about and test on heavy duty, advanced industrial machines. Consequently, his recent projects all began as serendipities from playing with different devices.

Lyla Wu, CEO at Neuni, giving the opening speech

Introduction by Christophe Guberan

Hydro-Fold is one of Christophe’s iconic design pieces. It aims to explore the properties of paper and how its structure can change with liquid. With extensive experimentation on a wide variety of paper types, Christophe found out tracing paper reacts the most vigorously to humidity. He made a water printing device by refilling depleted ink cartridges. Moreover, he set up the printing software so that he could change different patterns such as grids and shapes as well as determine line thickness and transparency to produce various bending effects. After papers go through the printer, they are left untouched, allowing moisture to evaporate, thus contracting paper fibers. The papers would eventually transform from two-dimensional sheets to three-dimensional structure in which lines become edges and surfaces become stable volumes.

Tracing paper going through the water printer

As water evaporates, the paper transforms on its own

The Hydro-Fold project lent inspiration to Christophe’s Active Wood project at the Self Assembly Lab. After he learnt that wood-bending, to a certain extent, works similarly to paper folding (both requires contraction of fibers), he attempted to find the perfect composite material for wood and ways to let it self-transform. And Christophe, with the help from the Self Assembly Lab, managed to do so.

Finally, Christophe pushed the boundaries one step further by engineering material in such a way that it transforms into complex daily objects. The result embodied characteristics of both an art piece and a functional tool: Active Shoes.

As the lecture came to an end, Christophe introduced more of his design projects. A common theme underlaid all of them - a sense of connection and growth. Throughout the years, Christophe’s design become more interwoven and sophisticated. His passion for experimentation as well as his constant growth mindset set him apart from the crowd. In fact, this research trip for Christophe will enable him to travel around China and learn more about Chinese industrial machines and practices.

We would like to thank Christophe Guberan and Neuni for this eye-opening event and we hope more people will be inspired to partake in the discussion.

Stay tuned for our next event!

Bring the Past Time Back or Live in the Future? Re-Thinking Architecture

By Yao Lan, Junior Project Manager - Art-Science

On July 18th, swissnex China was honored to present a very inspiring event with two ETH Zürich Alumni, Dr. Yifan Wang and Prof. Hao Hua from Southeast University, who gave us a glance at two interdisciplinary research fields of architecture studies.

During the lecture, Dr. Wang shared with the audience her research project about the genius Zayton (Quanzhou) with the architectural anthropological critiques. With reflectively thinking about the space, she mentioned the concept of ‘genius loci’ in global architecture history, explained the traces of a spatial concept that essentially has interacted with Chinese people for a long time.

The second part of this event is about how computational design and digital fabrication rationalize the architectural design as well as cultivate new imaginations. Prof. Hua regarded the mathematics, especially Descartes’s coordinate system, as a new-old method for design of not only architecture, but also artifacts and sculptures. Based on this insight, he introduced the software that he used for coding infinite series of products.

It feels like an adventure through the history of architecture in Dr. Yifan Wang’s presentation while Dr. Hao Hua’s talk was about looking into the next era. Combining the past with the future, both presentations have motivated the audience to re-think about architecture. After the insightful dialogue between both speakers and the active Q&A session, the audience continued discussions with the two Swiss linked researchers during the networking reception.

From Bio-art to Synthetic Biology

by Lan YAO, Junior Project Manager for Interdisciplinary and Special Projects

Co-organized with Chronus Art Center, swissnex China presented a special Café des Sciences Lecture featuring synthetic biology with a guided tour of Bio-art Exhibition on 20th June.

Famous Chinese artist – Mr. Liang Shaoji elaborated on his featured work with cocoons during the guided tour. Influenced by the philosophical thinking of Martin Heidegger and the Chinese ancient philosophers – Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi, Mr. Liang sees the sadness and the strife of human life in raw silk thread and turns the thoughts into contemporary art installations using unusual expertise and extraordinary techniques. After the guided tour, Prof. Mario Andrea Marchisio, Post – Doctor graduated from ETH Zurich gave a glance at his research on engineering microbes as living sensors. Prof. Marchisio currently works as an Associate Professor in Tianjin University where he has a research lab dedicated to synthetic biology. During his talk, he explained his research on realizing biosensors in the yeast S. cerevisiae and shared with us the outcome of the current research phase that anti-CRISPR proteins can work efficiently in S. cerevisiae cells. Audience from professional background had a good discussion with the speakers and enjoyed the evening.

Café des Sciences is a new format at swissnex China offering a monthly platform for Swiss Spotlight Scientists and Startups to present their projects and engage with the local community. The lectures are followed by a networking reception and scheduled to take place every third Thursday each month at swissnex China or our partner spaces.

Please stay tuned for our next event on Architecture and save the date for 18th July.

VR_I in Shanghai - Dancing in Immersive Virtual Reality

By Yiwen Sun, Project Leader - Interdisciplinary & Special Projects 

Organized by swissnex China, VR_I: A Contemporary Dance Piece in Immersive Virtual Reality was brought to the Chinese audience for the first time. Throughout the 8-day performances from 9-12/15-18 May, VR_I has received over 500 spectators at Chronus Art Center, located in M50, the renowned art & design district of Shanghai. The Director and Choreographer of VR_I – Gilles Jobin and his touring team also had their first touch with China.

Pioneering contemporary dance, Gilles Jobin developed VR_I with the leading motion capture technology and virtual reality experts – Artanim, which provides viewers with the unique sensory experience. During the experience, participants can thus interact physically and even communicate with the others. The virtual dancers then come to blur their perception, multiplying, growing to the point of becoming giants or becoming tiny. With these effects of scale, Gilles Jobin addresses the concept of spatiality in a truly original way.

spectators experiencing VR_I at Chronus Art Center, Shanghai

Roundtable Discussion on the future of Virtual Reality and Contemporary Dance

Link to watch the video:

https://www.zaiart.com/appwrapper_dist/appShare/live.html?id=e4ba428652b44700820efcce04fdadd6

On 10th May, a roundtable discussion with experts and professionals in the fields of Virtual Reality and performing arts were held at Chronus Art Center. Around 55 guests attended the event while 6959 audience watched the online live streaming of the discussion.

Dr. Felix Moesner giving the welcome speech.

Roundtable discussion speakers

Moderated by Salar Shahna from the World VR Forum, our guest speakers – nunu kong, Daming Zhang and Roger Yang shared their perspectives and insights on the questions such as how the new technology changes the choreography, how do the audience and the critics perceive such work, how to balance the artistic and economic value and what will be the future trend of Virtual reality in terms of application.

Attendants of the roundtable discussion.

Gilles Jobin: “Shanghai is amazing!”

VR_I has brought many of the Chinese audience their first unique VR experience with contemporary dance, while the two-week stay in Shanghai left Gilles Jobin and his team unforgettable first impressions of China.

Along with the performance of VR_I, under the arrangement of swissnex China, Gilles Jobin and his team were connected to the local artists, VR experts as well as arts organizations such as Rockbund Art Museum, Power Station of Art and How Art Museum. Different thoughts and inspirations on the new work were emerged during the meetings and visits; potential co-operations between the two parties were established and explored.

VR_I crew with swissnex China staff and the local experts.