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Embracing futurism when living in now …

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在比利时Kaai Theatre举行的performatik艺术节于2月21日(布鲁塞尔时间)完满结束,相信不少观众看过/感受过/听说过人民城寨,对在城寨里玩转风水的广州艺术家黄河印象尤深,其在虚拟世界对传统气场概念和空间的诘问是展览的一个亮点。

这一次Performatik除了对各种Live art 大力拥抱, 同时也对已一百岁的未来主义献上一曲赞歌。在Performatik的首页上,主办方开宗明义说明要庆贺意大利未来主义的一百大寿(自Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti 在1909年二月二十日于Le Figaro 发表未来主义宣言算起), 理由简单,皆因“未来主义是二十世纪先锋艺术的萌芽点”。

因为某些原因,一向甚少关注未来主义,充其量看过未来主义宣言和未来主义艺术家/音乐家 Luigi Russolo 在1913年写的噪音的艺术,对Marinetti为什么后来变成了墨索里尼的支持者,我也不追问,正如我对海德格尔倾向纳粹的反应一样。

未来主义是对十八,十九世纪欧洲工业化的回应(看到他们对汽车和速度的强调就知道,噪音的艺术中亦提及 “古代为寂闃一片,直至十九世纪机器面世,噪音才得以诞生。”), 提倡速度,是对科技和新时代的憧憬,希望时间巨轮能把个体的体验伸延到极限。我的未来主义很简单,就是把在当下透支想像中的未来。当过去一个世纪,社会的发展让我们感受到过快过热过剩的副作用,甚至有人已经对工具理性和速度厌倦到要反其道而行(譬如有人舍快餐而提倡“慢食”),我们到底要一个什么样的未来?再想深一层,什么是未来?下一分钟?十年后的某刻?还是未来十年的总和?

我们是不是像本雅明说的Paul Klee 天使一样,面向废墟一样的过去,被风吹向未来?

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Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

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Luigi Russolo

Blog — Nokan Vlodovic, February 26, 2009 @ 11:07 pm

Coming! People’s Monthly

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What does utopia mean in the mind of RMB City’s first mayor (SL:UliSigg Cisse)? What are the SL dreams of some international, accomplished curators? What do SL architects think about RL architecture? Find the answers of the above questions in People’s Monthly – RMB City’s official newsletter – that contains inspiring discourses connceting RMB City, urbanism, SL, Virtual worlds, art, utopia … in a neatly-designed, tiny publication.

The debut issue of People’s Monthly will hit the street in March … stayed tuned to the RMB City blog for more updated info.

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Blog — Nokan Vlodovic, @ 9:46 pm

Namesakes

I just discovered there is some band right now in America called “Miniature Tigers“…

Obviously in real-life, we don’t assume our names are completely unique (depending on how common they are, we may share them with literally millions of other people). But in Second Life, with names as outlandish as Tuna Oddfellow and Gazira Babeli (it really feels like a Charles Dickens novel sometimes), it seems more likely that our SL names might be one in a million.

When I first created my avatar, choosing the name seemed such a very important step, especially because the last names Linden allows you to pick from are so limited. But in some ways, that made it a bit easier, as certain last names do set a course for the first. The moment I spotted “Tigerpaw,” I knew I wanted to be a “Miniature Tigerpaw.”

Of course in real life, I just realized, we don’t get to pick our last names either… Linden is just doing what our parents have for us already, narrowing the field of our possible name-based identities.

Blog — Tags: , — Miniature Tigerpaw, February 16, 2009 @ 11:48 pm

RMB City on That’s Beijing

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In its latest issue, That’s Beijing brings an article about RMB City and Cao Fei.
To read the whole article., please click here.

Blog — Nokan Vlodovic, February 15, 2009 @ 11:09 pm

RMB City on That’s Beijing, Feb 2009

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Cao Fei’s RMB City
Brick-reduced recipes for Beijing’s future
by Jan Hauters, translated by Zhao Li
That’s Beijing, Feb 1st, 2009

When one puts a right hand onto The Chinese Dream—a bible-sized book on the urbanized east of China, apostled by Neville Mars and Adrian Hornsby—have a friend surrealistically utter “Do you swear to uphold the city and nothing but the city so help you Cao Fei? ”With this work in the right hand and a hand-held computer in the left, log-on the Internet and visit RMBcity.com.

-Intangible Architecture;Trans-local Museums
As a critical dweller of the Beijing metropolis one might begin to fathom what our city’s future might hold. that’s Beijing ventured out and explored Cao Fei’s collaborative online virtual art zone; RMB City.

With the aid of various art-oriented institutions and individuals, Cao Fei has conceptualized a virtual metropolis dubbed RMB City. It is set in the online construction named Second Life (SL); a virtual world. RMB City promotes artistic events and is an extension of China’s urbanized east. Fair to say, the city is a hybrid of Beijing, of Chinese cultural memes and any one metropolitan setting from around the globe.

The artist elaborated that it is an experimental art project initiated by individual artists and that it “takes virtual cities as units.”

-Real public Space in Virtual Worlds
Those readers who are unfamiliar with the overall concept of online worlds might want to visit secondlife.com. Through that world’s market places it has an actual economy and real profits for its users, overall ranging into millions of tangible dollars. RMB City’s PR introduces its surrounding realm clearly, “SL was conceived as an online platform for participants to create a parallel reality in which 14 million people worldwide have registered since it launched in 2003.” Each user is represented by an ‘avatar’—a customizable and movable digital figurine within virtual reality graphics.

When asked about her choice of an international virtual world rather than a domestic one, Cao Fei presents a few seemingly contradicting yet undeniable facts:“Chinese players account for 5% of the SL’s total population. SL is not very popular in China, as it is a society communicating in English. Still, there are also many Chinese organizations stationed in it.”

-A Tale of Binary Cities
The domestic counterpart of SL, Hipihi (hipihi.com), is still in its initial stage and groping its way. According to our interviewee it is still not creative and forward-looking. “More importantly,“ she said,“current [domestic] laws on online worlds are clamping down the virtual financial opportunities. [The international world,] SL, is a free-market economy and has been researched and developed for many years.”

“The birth of this new pan-internationalism,” this artist-visionary points out,“influences our understanding of ‘nation’or ‘region’.” She continues by underlining that “the realities of the geopolitical conflicts have been evolved into confrontations among international virtual communities and inter-cities with different concepts.”

-Cao Fei’s Virtual Roots
This revered video and New Media artist—who claims not to be an Internet nor Multimedia artist—explains that she got in touch with SL through Zhang Anding’s blog and articles:“his articles on the virtual economy, published in the 21st Century Economic Observer, awakened my curiosity about this un•known world.” Under the username ‘China Tracy’, Cao Fei has had a SL avatar since early 2007.

When asked what her motivations are, Cao shares that the project prompts her with a clear understanding of her own ‘World’in a broader sense.The artist continues by saying,“RMB City enables me to find out the possibility of a new cultural frame or a new future among the inter-conversion between the two worlds [the online vs. offline world].”

Cao Fei introduces her avatar-self, ‘China Tracy’, as “an etension of touch and feeling, a resident braving adventure in the virtual world and a mirror image.” Cao assures, “she is younger, closer to perfection, with an ever-young appearance, energetic and approachable.”

-The Hunted City, Free as Game
When asked to summarize RMB City, Cao Fei sets off in a po•etic mantra style: “ It’s an E-topian City / E-colony City / Non-plan City / Customized City / Mobile City / Post-Sedentary City / Sampling City / Superficial City / Buffer City / Drama City.”

While Beijing tries to catch a breath she continues that RMB City’s a place for:“Multicultural Exchange / Public Interaction and Dialogue / Experimental Projects / Art and Technology / OpenSource Art / Future-Architecture / Digit-Urban Explora•tion / Digit-Field Investigation / Virtual Community Building / E-Citizen Autonomy;” leaving us gasping in reflection.

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The City’s TV Channel.

Glimpses of the binary urbanization Cao Fei spearheads can be caught on Youtube. A digital virtual TV channel, “RMBCity-Hall Channel,” is provided for those interested in specific docu•mentaries on the events unfolding within the city. Of course, the channel is also attractive to media users who are inhib•ited to jump onto the virtual-world wagon. Gazes can be jetted through Youtube’s looking glass into this specific Second Life’s urban culture. (youtube.com/user/RMBCityHall). One of its lat•est ‘airings’ takes you on a first-person (as if you held the virtual camera) tour of “Christian Dior & Chinese Artists.” This project is in collaboration with 798’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Arts—opening its futuristic virtual museum space in RMB City.

Press — Nokan Vlodovic, @ 10:45 pm

After the sun sets…

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Our chief engineers Avatrian have posted some lovely snapshots of RMB City at night — our “urban illumination scheme” is still being worked out, but feel free to visit our SIM during SL-nighttime hours and get a taste of RMB AfterDark…

Blog — Tags: — Miniature Tigerpaw, February 14, 2009 @ 1:39 am

Photoshopping the CCTV Fire

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Some Photoshop-savvy “netizens” have been making their own interpretations of the CCTV fire imagery, layering on monster and alien attacks, cartoonish personifications of the buildings, the tracing of mysterious symbols in the smoke-clouds…

It seems only natural to want to “metabolize” such an epic-scale disaster by shrinking it to the level of the cute, or distancing it via the lenses of narrative and myth. Maybe such a catastrophe provokes the need to take more “authorship” than normal over one’s city (as demonstrated here, in a very light-hearted manner). Obviously since there was very little loss of life, it doesn’t feel like a “human tragedy” — more a tragedy of inanimate objects and systems. We know so little about the secret life and emotions of glass and steel. Does the urban fabric of Beijing itself feel the “burn”?

See more on Chinasmack.com.

(more…)

Blog — Tags: , , , , — Miniature Tigerpaw, February 12, 2009 @ 2:05 am

RL CCTV burns; People’s Entertainment Television is just fine

CCTV's TVCC on fire
(from CNReviews.com)
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(from RMB City)

On Monday evening, I was driving home in a taxi along Beijing’s 3rd Ring Road (in Real Life), when the traffic began to slow down… It was the final day of the Lunar New Year, also known as “Lantern Festival,” and hence the night when all of Beijing would attempt to set off as many fireworks as possible before they became prohibited again the next morning (and until the next turning of the Lunar Year, which would briefly make the city a flashing kaleidoscope once more). The evening was full of bang, sparkle, and pop in all directions, many revelers young and old standing on street corners to enjoy the show, but then as we approached the CCTV building, the crowds grew bigger and the cars ground to an almost halt. The taxi driver exclaimed that there must be a fire, and urged me to look out the left-side (Eastern) windows of the car. Sure enough, I saw small flames and huge black smoke clouds billowing out of the top of the tall building next to CCTV. He said, “I’m sure this will be in the newspaper tomorrow.” Only a little while later, the entire building was burning – as I continued to watch via my laptop at home.

Of course, RMB City has its own People’s Entertainment Television Center, gently spinning in the air above our Sims, untouched by any threat of spreading sparks. It’s amazing to remember, on such a huge scale, just how fragile a platform First Life is.

A nice essay by Bert de Muynck on Artforum China gives more reflection on the real-life icon, and its place in the ever-changing symbolic weather of Beijing.

Artforum China
(From Artforum China)

Blog — Tags: , , , — Miniature Tigerpaw, @ 1:50 am

RMB City at Performatik!

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RMB City is going to be shown at Performatik 09, a Kaaitheatre festival that will be taken place from 13 Feb to 21 Feb, 2009 in Brussels, Belgium. Focusing on “work founded on exchange and collaboration between disciplines”, this fiesta of art happenings stresses an element — live event. Under this topic, concerts, performance art, live art, body art … are going to blow the audiences’ minds.

Among tons of programs/works by accomplished artists including Stelarc (you probably have seen his “third ear”) and Lawrence Weiner, RMB City will be shown at performatik on 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21 Feb 2009 (Brussels Time). Apart from the visual/ sociological/ art discourses and amzaing virtual architectures, Master Q, a.k.a Guangzhou-based artist Huang He (SL: queenShoe Voom) ‘s virtual fengshui project is definitely a highlight of RMB City — the SL fantasia developed by artist Cao Fei (SL: China Tracy) and Vitamin Creative Space. Art-goers! Prepare for the new eye-blinding journey through the pixels!

RMB City on Performatik website: http://www.kaaitheater.be/productie.jsp?productie=533&lang=en
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Blog — Nokan Vlodovic, February 11, 2009 @ 11:20 pm

RMB City on VintFalken.com

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Just saw an article RMB City in Second Life VintFalken.com, a website offers news of games about sanpshotting, building and designing.

I was fascinated by the polaroid-esque pictures they took inside RMB City, and their understanding about city – “fragments of lives”, more than a whole set concrete blocks mass-produced by some famous architects.

Blog — Nokan Vlodovic, February 10, 2009 @ 2:41 am

RMB City in Second Life

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RMB City in Second Life
February 8, 2009
VintFalken.com

We’ve seen Cao Fei’s “RMB City” in many forms already, ranging from real life 3D models to CGI images and video of the virtual city design, but only recently this giant build was created in Second Life. Ranging 4 Second Life islands, the RMB City is since January accessible for the wide avatar public. Together with the opening in Second Life, the RMBcity.com website is being filled with lots of RMB City goodness, such as RL & SL event listings, a city guide, the latest news and a city manifesto. In that city manifesto Cao Fei (avatar name: China Tracy) writes:

“What we see and touch are real, what we breath and feel are virtual; our voice is real, our memory is virtual; fortune is real, poverty is virtual; fulfilment is real, sadness is virtual; resentment is real, affection is virtual; foolishness is real, wisdom is virtual; reigning is real, endurance is virtual; living is real, dying is virtual; the land is real, the sky is virtual…then, from this moment on, let all the virtual-real conflicts vanish in RMBCity.”

At RMB City, there is just one thing that makes that this virtual urban area does not qualify fully as a city, yet. Despite all city planning, in real life, never does one person, or only a few, think out a city. It’s a collection of little pieces of lives… your life, that of your neighbours, that of your colleagues, that of the stranger on the bus, a kid going out for ice cream … . RMB City has not been “lived” yet. There are no marks of use: a road worn down, buildings that tell history, graffiti on the bus, a thrown away bottle, little advertisements with phone numbers on them or even worn down flowers for the kid that wanted the ice cream so badly it didn’t look before crossing the road. Some might call this all “decay”, but it’s exactly that contamination by life which makes a city interesting to me. I hope, that as RMB City progresses, we get to see exactly that, fragments of how life in this city could be.

Read more on RMB City at rmbcity.com (press connect to enter the site) or go see for yourself in Second Life (TP link or search for “RMB City” using the Second Life Map). And if you have figured out how your life this “virtual but real” metropolis would be like, write them down, illustrate them with snapshots and share the story, as I’m dying to know how it is to live here and how the city will look once it’s “used”!

(PS. water reflections are off in the snapshots, and glow makes things look weird. blame LL. that they stop forcing us to mandatory upgrade to buggy clients when the previous one was working perfectly. *sighs*)

To read the original article, press here

Press — Nokan Vlodovic, @ 12:37 am

Art in the shadow of Katrina: Prospect New Orleans P.1 in the critic’s eyes

Writer/ critic/ designer Hrag Vartanian wrote an interesting article aboout Prosepct New Orleans, the biggest among the art biennales that have taken place in the United States. Starting with Mark Bradford’s piece – an ark called “Mithra” (2008), Vartanian commenced his journey of wandering amongst the art pieces in the post-Katrina New Orleans.

Hrag talked about NO LAB, RMB City’s project collaborating with MAP OFFICE , after his encounter with the paper-cut-out Obama in the virtual New Orleans in NO LAB, Hrag commented “It occurred to me that we will realize soon enough how well-placed our hope in him really is.”

To read the article, press here

Blog — Nokan Vlodovic, February 9, 2009 @ 2:37 am

晚过城寨

“飞鸟入林知有爱,人困夕阳城寨。”

“人民城寨依然是,只有向来须鬓非。”

“城寨建业楼,山尽沧海头。”

“城,黑云压城城欲摧,甲光向日金鳞开。”

“城寨萝茑合,表里无寸土。但闻鸟啼声,不见鸟啼处。”

(remixed and quoted from chinese poem)

Blog — China Tracy, February 8, 2009 @ 10:48 am

Visitors to the City / records of their travels

Since our opening, many avatars are making the trip to RMB City – no entry visa required!

Over at Virtual Underworld, one such traveler has recently posted about RMB City, saying: “Its not a ‘mirror world’, and truthfully it is hard to describe.” All in all, we’d have to agree – descriptions are difficult, best you visit for yourself… (read more)

Virtual Underworld at RMB City
(more…)

Blog — Miniature Tigerpaw, February 6, 2009 @ 3:21 am

Axis Mundi

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Sometimes things just connect. The other day I was reminded of this line from part of T.S. Eliot‘s Four Quartets:

“the still point of the turning world”

I have always been particularly drawn to the People’s Observation Wheel in RMB City, and when I thought about this phrase again it clicked for me. Though the City Hall appears to be the main center for RMB City, it seems the wheel might be an important fulcrum as well. I then remembered the phrase “Axis Mundi”, and how nearly all world cultures have their own version of this. The still point that connects heaven and earth. The eternal, unchanging center of a swirling chaos.

Blog — Miniature Tigerpaw, February 2, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
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