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    BEIJING, July 25 -- When you enter this interactive art show, three naked cleaners materialize from nowhere and brush away your footprints. Elsewhere, you step onto a digital game stage, start to dance and your universe also starts to move.

    When it comes to new media art or multimedia art, most Chinese people are unfamiliar with the art form and have been slow to accept it. Many think of all new media vaguely as the video art that originated in the 1960s and still know very little about multimedia digital art that arose in the 1980s.

    For traditional Chinese sensibilities, it is often difficult to understand the new art forms because much of the new media and multimedia art is about extremely odd and abstract concepts.

    Western artists, on the other hand, are more comfortable with abstract concepts and with mixing and experimenting with unlikely genres, and creating entirely new forms.

    Now the "Body Media" exhibition displays the latest in interactive art from China and eight other countries and regions. Eleven groups of artists are showing their works at China's first international interactive art exhibition, organized by Fudan University's Visual Art Institute and the Shanghai Sculpture Center.

    Trained in traditional Chinese painting, Du Zhenjun has been working in contemporary art in Paris for the past 16 years, considering himself artistically, culturally and historically between two worlds - East and West.

    "In France, I have a strong feeling of the conflicts between the East and the West in terms of cultural, ethical and moral issues," says Du, a Chinese multimedia artist who is based in Paris. "In my opinion, it is the various cultural dogmas that generate so many clashes between societies."

    While most people believe that keeping their own cultural characteristics would make for a better world, Du thinks the other way around. This pointed idea, removing cultural traces, is presented through one of his classical interactive installations - "Cleaning" - which is currently on display.

    Visitors walk down a corridor on a carpet. Whenever a visitor moves, three-dimensional images instantly appear in his or her wake, kneeling over, brushing imaginary footprints away. If 10 visitors walk down the corridor, 30 cleaners instantly huddle over their footprints, cleaning away.

    The installation is placed at the entrance to the exhibition so that all visitors must walk through it. This interactive work uses 196 sensors on the ground to pick up visitors' movement and four controlling computers. Four video cameras from the ceiling project sequences illustrating the different actions.

    If visitors think the installation is an interactive game about stepping on the carpet and seeing nude people brushing away one's footprints, then, think again.

    "With the individualism sweeping throughout the world, people are keen on promoting their own culture and only explore the demerits of others, especially other cultures," explains Du.

    He believes that the nude body is a signature like any other of getting close to the fundamental nature of things. "We should erase any cultural marks and see the world without discrimination, that's why I made all the cleaning people nude."

    In the exhibition, Du is special - not only because he is the only Chinese artist invited, but also he is the only multimedia artist who didn't upgrade his technology since he created the work in 2003.

    Du says he never puts new technology into his old works even though that would make it easier to finish the whole installation. "My installation represents my opinion, my life and also the technology at that certain period of time. Those three facts are like a whole in all of my artworks," says Du.

    Du studied classical fine art in Shanghai University. Although trained as a traditional Chinese painter, he switched to abstract art as soon as he arrived in Paris 16 years ago.

    He tried "multimedia" textured art, photography and other art forms to find an artistic language that suited him. Then he caught the wave of digital technology and entered the multimedia art world.

    "When I was creating a Chinese painting, time could be still," notes Du. "This is totally the opposite for multimedia art, where time goes by quickly."

    Du says that since he lives in the modern world, he prefers to use modern language and methods to express himself.

    As one of the first generation of artists to incorporate digital technologies into art pieces, Du finds that the modern art world hasn't made major improvements since the 1980s when video art flourished in its most creative period. No art schools or ideas of such profound influence have occurred since then, says Du.

    "I want to go beyond video," he says. "I need a new language to formulate a possibility, and to live with the time."

    Though he is a Shanghai native, Du hasn't set up his own art studio in China since the multimedia art has just started at a fairly slow pace. This is probably due to fact that new media art and multimedia art are hard to sell, he says.

    According to Du, in Western countries multimedia art is usually supported by the government to raise the "new cultural" image for the city or country. This is definitely not the case in China - anything without market value will disappear.

    Du cites two other problems for experimental art in China - the lack of big supporting organizations, and artists' involvement in art market.

    "Our artists, both the young and the old generation, are much too involved in the bubbling art market," says this pioneering artist. "Experimental art can not be valued by any commercial market."

    "However, there is no doubt that China will catch up in the new media and multi-media art as we are keeping up with the pace of global technology development," Du concludes.

    You're on stage

    Time's Up, a group from Austria

    with more than 20 members internationally, displays "Graviton" - an interactive game setting - a fresh experience for most Chinese visitors. It is considered by many as the most interactive of all the installations at the show.

    Time's Up creates situations that investigate the impact of three factors - design, movement and image - on the individual.

    "Situations are a more important part in our art work," says Tim Boykett, one of the group's three members who came to Shanghai. "Visitors can come into a space where it seems related with everyday life, but it is extended, changed and twisted, and everything is made a little different."

    Asking itself how to model a little universe with a computer, the group created the sprawling installation, comprised of six round stages where participants can step on and join the game. They can dance, and move as they please, the environment changes with their movement. Each person on his or her stage can see others on their stages and their actions affect each other in their interactive universe.

    Two projectors screen the image of the universe on the ground and six input devices are in control. The image of the universe changes in accordance with the random movement of the participants.

    Time's Up members want to "have great fun" through creating an experimental situation. And they want their visitors to have fun with their work as well.

    Boykett describes their artwork as "social software," which is a very commonly used term among Western new media artists. "Technology is just tool, a tool to help us to present what the 1980s think the future would be. What we are doing is to create a situation and see some interesting physical interaction in it."

    Not like others who think that new media art and multimedia art are "elite art," a lot of technologies Time's Up uses are very old. Some of the parts in their installation are second hand, most of which came from industrial robots.

    They are not fond of the latest art craze and technology, or other modern stuff, they just choose the right technology to build the situation around the environment that is most suitable. They want interaction between environment and human behavior.

    "We are trying to create a world that has something else compared with the common virtual world," notes Boykett, who has been working in the new media art field for more than 15 years.

    For Boykett, the feeling of participating in those art events whether in Western countries or in China is just the same, with a big room full of people building things, a lot of people sitting in front of laptops, worried about things, people busy solving technical problems, and a little bit of last-minute panic.

    "We need an environment that is much more social and long-term, involving a larger population and visitors in a real interaction environment for a longer period of time, building small livable world," says Boykett. "Being part of an exhibition is just not enough."

    Time's Up idea is fairly creative and new to most Chinese people. They are trying to build an environment where people are happy to be living all the time. "It is an open place, such as a park, that encourages social and all the other interactions between people and people, and between people and technology," says Boykett.

    (Source: Shanghai Daily)