Extra Event 2: Museum of Liaoning province

 

 

Museum of Liaoning province is the largest museum in Liaoning province. Although it is considered an integrated museum, I could feel that it is different from the Naitonal Museum of China.The culture of my province is more specific. People who visit this museum get to know a particicular culture in a more specific way.

 

The first thing I saw in the museum is the voice guide counter. Visitors can rent a voice guide machine at the counter. This is quite common in big museums in China, but in this case, it reminded me that technology is everywhere, even in a place where only ancient objects are being displayed.

 

 



 It was also interesting to actually see technology and ancient art existing at the same place. In the glass box where ancient antiques were being displayed, there was a machine as shown in the picture above, monitoring the temperature and humidity in the box. CCTV cameras were everywhere to keep the art works safe.

 

This museum is not so technologically advanced as the National Museum of China. Yet we saw modern technology everywhere. Hence I had this strong feeling that technology is already part of culture. In the future when more modern technology is being applied, there should not be any conflicts.

 

The problem of the two cultures may no longer exist in the future, as advancements in technology is merging the culures into a whole.

Extra event 1: Museum of Chinese Industry

As a citizen of Shenyang, I felt proud that the Museum of Chinese Industry is located here. Shenyang is one of the largest industrial cities in China. A lot of technological advances happened here. Visiting the museum was to get familiar with the history of China’s technological development.

When I typed down the word ‘history’, technology here is already connected to a kind of art. Most people would agree with me that museums and art cannot be separated. I have a friend who is studying museum management in Australia. Her professor told her that no matter what kind of museum she is in charge of, the way people display objects is always art. Now, in Museum of Chinese Industry, machines become the subject to be appreciated by visitors. In this museum, I just find it so easy to connect modern technology with art.

What I found interesting was the machine tool which made the nation’s first national emblem. The machine was first designated to make other machines, not to make only emblems. Hence, I concluded that modern art had a lot in common with modern technology.

Visiting the Museum of Chinese Industry is a combination of history enrichment and art education. Making machinery the subject of art was never in my mind throughout the course. This visit made me realize the artistic value of machinery exhibition. There are a lot of former factories that are transformed into art zones, where artists build their galleries. I look forward to visit some of them as well.

 

Reference:

Museum of Chinese Industry, http://www.chnim.org/index/
Museum of Chinese Industry, Wikepedia Chinese, http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%B7%A5%E4%B8%9A%E5%8D%9A%E7%89%A9%E9%A6%86

Event 3: National Museum of China

I went to Beijing to visit the National Museum of China, one of the largest museums in the country. As the museum has as many as 1,050,000 permanent collections, I was interested to figure out how these invaluable collections are being preserved. Furthermore, I also heard that National Museum of China had a reputation of ‘interactive museum’. From how people described the museum I thought there must be some connections to modern technology, but how? I brought this question to the museum as well.

In week 4 I did some research on biotechnology, and found out that scientists are using bio-nanotechnology to preserve art works. Thus, I went to ask people in the museum about whether such technology is being applied in the museum. They told me that such a technology is still being worked on, but biotech knowledge is essential for preservation of ancient drawings, sculptures and other antiques. Scientists and archaeologists in the museum have figured out the perfect temperature and humidity for keeping the collections. Objects made of different materials were applied different kinds of chemicals to lower the possibility of natural erosion. In such case, science is actually helping art. Without application of scientific theories, many objects shown in the museum may not even be able to last for long time. The fact that such preservation technology is being applied instead of being just ideal made me excited.

The interaction of the museum with visitors also impressed me. The museum itself guides us around. For example, behind the ‘rabbit head’ and the ‘horse head’ from Yuanmingyuan, there is a screen telling the story of Yuanmingyuan, once the prettiest garden in China. Animation and three-dimensional technology are used to explain origins of culture. In National Museum of China, technology makes art more straight forward. Even for people who cannot read, they get to learn something about art when they are attracted by this high-tech fantasy.

Today, everything is moving toward technology. Visiting the National Museum of China made me realize that one of the major functions of technology in the field of art is to promote it. Internet makes most forms of art available to net users; new technologies provides creative platforms for art and last but not the least, technology makes certain forms of art more appealing to people who are not very familiar with art theories.

Reference:

National Museum of China, wikepedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_China
National Museum of China, http://en.chnmuseum.cn/(S(azejfy55ofe13hei0zpbzr2d))/default.aspx

Event 2: Shenyang Urban Planning Exhibition Hall

 

Overview model of Shenyang city

 

The Shenyang Urban Planning and Exhibition Hall is dedicated to the current city planning of Shenyang and also takes into consideration the cultural heritage. It combines past, present and future. An interactive city model of 800 square meters makes future become reality. The visitors can influence the action from the galleries by moving single modules and thus create their own image of the city of tomorrow.

The concept of the Third Culture is pretty straight forward to me when I visited the museum. I never thought about planning a city. For me, this is too big a problem. When leaders are planning a city, both technological development and aesthetics have to be considered.  As I visited this museum as an event of Desma9, I brought along questions: how do people consider both science and art when building a city? Is there a conflict between science and art in civil engineering?

The conflict definitely exists. If you ask an artist to plan a city, he or she would come up a plan that everybody appreciates, except for scientists, who would doubt the feasibility of such a proposal. In the museum, such a conflict is everywhere. In the museum, I saw the original design of Shenyang Art Center. The ideal art center was much bigger, and expanded further. However, this plan was altered by architects to lower the risks involved.  This reminded me of the ‘Bird Nest’ national sports stadium in Beijing. The design was appealing, and the bird nest structure provides strong support to the building. Indeed, architecture can be seen as a kind of ‘third culture’. Architects must be both artists and scientists in order to succeed.

 

                                          The original design of Shenyang Art Center

 

In this museum, there are sculptures and drawings, as well as LED screens and video demonstrations.  Art and science co-exist in a harmonious way. What left me the greatest impression was a video scroll, when technology is applied to make a new form of art presentation.

 

                                                                    the video scroll

                                              a sculpture showing the ancient empiral palace

   

Shenyang Urban Planning and Exhibition Hall is beautiful and ‘high-tech’. It showed me that my hometown Shenyang, as a city, is being built and developed by both scientists and artists. The world is to some extent similar: scientists and artists work together to make it thrive.


Citations:
Shenyang City Planning Exhibition Hall, China, 2007, http://www.atelier-brueckner.com/en/projects/developments/shenyang-city-planning-exhibition-hall-china-2007.html
 

Event 1: Shenyang Science and Technology Museum

The first place I visited was the Shenyang Science and Technology Museum. I heard that it used to have the largest robotics exhibition in China, so I thought that it would help me understand more about the relationship between robotics and art.  This museum incorporates a theatre where science-fictional movies are being shown.

About robotics and art

In the lectures I learnt that robotics provide a new way of expressing art. The third hand, for example, showed me an art form that I have never seen before.

 

I was not sure about whether robotic art can have an impact on audience until I witnessed the show in Shenyang Science and Technology Museum. They had a band of robots, each playing different musical instruments. The music they played was simple and not even attractive, but the facts that it was played by robots made a lot of people stop by and listen.  Hence, I realized that currently what is indeed appealing about robotic art is that people want to see the robots, and to a great extent, art is being promoted under such circumstances.

                                                                          The robot band

When we visit robots at museums, no matter what kind of robots we are looking for, we are already appreciating art. Somehow I felt that museums are always related to art, and I did see robots as artistic masterpieces. The appearances of robots shown in the museum was made high-tech looking. I saw a lot of robots, some of which are not even charged. However I must admit that robots are creatures that are carefully crafted by men. Hence, there is no doubt that robots themselves can be seen as art.

                                                            a robot chess player 

 

About the science-fictional movie, ‘tour to the universe’

This science-fictional movie, tour to the universe, is a story of a young boy travelling to the universe by train. In the movie, a lot of concepts relating to space science are being explained. For example, I learnt how combustion of fuel occurs in a lack-of-oxygen environment.

The idea of taking a train to other planets at first seemed ridiculous to me. After the theory of such an idea was explained in the movie, I realized that most parts of such an approach are scientifically correct. Art has this function of visualizing scientific theories. While pure text and diagrams do not make much sense to people other than scientists, art gives people a basic idea. The attractiveness of such kind of art has made a lot of people put in much effort realizing those fascinating scenes in movies, fictions and drawings.

 

Just a one-hour visit to the museum gave me more connections between art and science. As there are always new exhibitions and shows on in this museum, I hope to visit Shenyang Science and Technology again next summer.