An Overview of New Media Art Exhibitions in China (2017–2022)

The new media art exhibition, where artists utilise scientific and technological materials to create artworks as a fashion trend


BACKGROUND
Digital culture is increasingly important in all aspects of life (Bowen & Giannini 2021;Li & Bowen 2022), including in the world of the arts and museums (Giannini & Bowen 2019). The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly had its effect and accelerating some developments worldwide (Giannini & Bowen 2022a;2022b).
In a previous paper, the authors of this paper investigated the presentation of information relating to the Chengdu Biennale on Wikipedia (Bowen & Fan 2022) and some of the difficulties involved. In this paper, we consider a wider remit on recent developments in new media art around China, building on previous research work (Fan 2019;2020).

THE TERM NEW MEDIA ART
New media art in China, often as an oral expression, refers to five types: video art, video and performance art, experimental art, technological art, and digital art. The concept of new media art is a collective term relative to the Western art context, which mainly means the opposite of traditional material art like oil painting, ink painting, and still sculptures. They mostly contain Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), sensing elements, computer programming, or at least an electronic screen. It is an ambiguous term because new material or media has been absorbed in a relatively short period, from around 1990. Historical and political reasons has caused a time delay for China to follow Western art movements, especially the post-modernism art that occurred after 1960, understandable when considering the parallel period in China.
The first Western contemporary art exhibition hosted in China was held in 1985. At that time, the American artist Robert Rauschenberg was conducting his project, Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI), to find material in local areas in order to create and exhibit those ready-made artworks around the world (Rauschenberg 1986). He and his team chose two locations, Beijing (18 November -5 December 1985) and Tibet (2-23 December 1985) in China, and the show hosted in Beijing attracted more than 300,000 people to visit over three weeks. Many local artists that visited and were shocked by the artistic idea of using material to create artworks that once belonged to the anti-art Dadaist trend of Marcel Duchamp (Rauschenberg 2022): 146 "In a country where traditional media and methods were the artistic norm, Rauschenberg's unusual choice of materials and techniques was eye-opening." In short, Rauschenberg's exhibition profoundly influenced and inspired Chinese contemporary art. Artists thought that Rauschenberg spread the notion of Western post-modernism to China (Wang 2008).
Four years later, the first new media artwork occurred in China, a video artwork named '30×30cm' (displayed in a 1989 China modern art exhibition), which was created by Peili Zhang, seen as the father of Chinese video art. However, the consequence of the 1989 political upheaval in Beijing restricted the country's subsequent development of contemporary art. A fortunate aspect is that the home computer became much more available and fashionable around the 1990s, and China entered the computer era. Nowadays, young artists are often fond of such new technological skills to express their ideas spontaneously, especially for those born during the 1990s and 2000s. Some who lack scientific and engineering knowledge will tend to cooperate with specialised teams of technicians. It is undeniable that technological art and art combined with science have made significant progress in recent years.

EARLY KEY ACADEMIC ORGANISATIONS IN ART AND SCIENCE
Before providing an overview of relevant organisations, an important book, New Media Art, written by Yanxiang Zhang (2005), needs to be mentioned. The author collects numerous foreign artistic works and introduces technologies, including 3D, VR, multimedia, holographic technology, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), to present art in the book, which is also a summary of his teaching experience about art and science since 1998. Yanxiang Zhang was one of the pioneering scholars to study art and science before 2000, graduating from the University of Science In 2006, Tongji University established an international centre for new media arts (TIMAC), supporting Expo 2010 in Shanghai, aimed at being a preliminary preparation for studying how to use contemporary media art to spread Chinese culture. In 2010, the School of Intermedia Art (SIMA) was established at the China Academy of Art, located in Hangzhou (a city near Shanghai, situated in southeast China). It became a crucial active focus for young artists creating new media art. One major reason is that both Peili Zhang (the father of Chinese video art) and the leading media artist Zhijie Qiu work there as teachers. In 2013, the Chronus Art Center (CAC) was established, the first such non-governmental organisation and an academic centre focused on new media art in Shanghai.
The information above on new media art theory and practice in China is mainly based on higher education institutes, which also means that it is only known by a limited number of people. When considering why new media art prospered so quickly in China, the other reason may well be the widespread use of social media, such as Weibo, which started in 2009, WeChat began in 2011, and TikTok began in 2016. Nowadays, those three media giants are still mainstream for Chinese individuals and companies to share their news within China.

Three teamLab 2017 shows in China
2017 was a crucial turning point for new media art in China, when it gained more widespread attention from both adults and children, who were first exposed to this show style. The Japanese new media art group teamLab was supported by a Chinese investor, Yang Juze, who was planning to influence the Chinese market and create a schedule for exhibitions in 2017. The different approach taken by teamLab China compared to what they displayed in Western countries was to extend the display to nearly half a year's duration. When they exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London (UK), their work, Flutter of Butterflies Beyond Borders (10-17 September 2015) was conducted over just a week. Another of teamLab's shows, Transcending Boundaries, was hosted in Pace London from 25 January to 11 March 2017, lasting seven weeks.
TeamLab's first show in China, Living Digital Forest and Future Park (Designboom 2017; see Figure 1), was hosted by Pace Beijing, in northern China, from 20 May to 10 October 2017. The first four months attracted more than 200,000 visitors, which was encouraging, so it was announced on 20 September 2017 that they planned to extend the duration to 19 November 2017, providing an additional month to exhibit their artworks. The final total of visitors was more than 300,000 people in Beijing. Quoting from the Designboom website (Narea 2017): "teamLab transforms the 1,500 square meter exhibition space into a synesthetic labyrinth using real-time projections and interactive technology. the flower artwork shifts and grows under the influence of the viewer's actions, ensuring that visual states can never be replicated." Considering the limited exhibition space, they had to restrict the visit time of spectators 60 minutes. The ultimate visitor numbers to the exhibition space were 1,200 people each day, with 150 people for each timed period. They also opened the show in the evening for a few days, from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm (e.g., see Figure 2).

Other New Media Art Exhibitions in 2017-2019
In 2017  In 2018, the Beijing Times Art Museum, a non-governmental art museum in China established in 2008, also hosted a new media group exhibition planned to celebrate its tenth anniversary. The tenth-anniversary feature exhibition Xcelerator (13 August -14 October 2018, see Figure 4) combined with the Xiaomi technology company to present artworks, inviting Gary Hill to take the position providing the shows academic support. Ten artworks with VR, AR, and other technologies were displayed within a 2,000-square-meter exhibition space. In the same year, the exhibition Animamix Biennale: Ballade in the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai (MoCA) provided a unique experience for spectators in one of their hall spaces, where they invited the viewer to sit in a wheelchair during their visit (e.g., see Figure 5). The price of Animamix was 80 CNY per person, which can buy two cups of American-style coffee in China (see Figure 6). In 2019, many non-governmental art museums or art centres in Shanghai hosted new media art exhibitions, such as the Ming Contemporary Art Museum, TANK Shanghai, chi K11 Art Museum, UNArt Center, West Bund Museum, Chronus Art Center, etc.

Chengdu New Media Art Exhibitions in 2020-2022
After Covid-19, the situation has become rather different for the Chinese population, with variable anti-epidemic political rules requiring people to stay in the local area to reduce contact with other cities. Thus, this section focuses on the art exhibitions in Chengdu, one of the southwestern cities in China.
New media art developed slowly in Chengdu before 2018. One reason is that organisation of the Chengdu Biennale (Bowen & Fan 2022) transferred to the local government, causing a seven-year gap from 2013 to 2021 with no exhibition taking place. A few new media artworks were exhibited at the Anren Biennale, another Biennale that was held in 2017, located at Anren, just west of Chengdu. In 2018, the opening show of the Zhi Art Museum, named Open, was an important step in revitalising new media art in Chengdu. In addition, teamLab also exhibited in Chengdu at a commercial hall in 2018.
The Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, located in Chongqing near Chengdu, was another local mainstream driver encouraging the development of new media art in southwest China. The Sichuan Fine Arts Institute initiated their Department of New Media Art in 2011. Still, the primary teaching trend concerned photography, performance art, and animation, which means they are less developed in art and technology.
In 2020, the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute combined with the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (Chengdu) for collaborative teaching, aiming to promote the merits of each other, using art and technology to create more high-quality artwork (e.g., see Figure 7). Their first show was Break the Barrier: The mutualism of art and science (September 2020), first hosted in Chengdu and later in Chongqing. They also hosted their student's artworks in 2021 as the second exhibition. However, in 2022, the display was cancelled due to the severe pandemic political controls in place at that time. The 2021 Chengdu Biennale (Bowen & Fan 2022) was supported financially by the local government and opened to the public free of charge. A feature was that nearly half of the artworks belonged to new media art in the leading museums: the Chengdu Art Museum (District B) or the Chengdu Museum of Contemporary Art. This exhibition was an important art event during the pandemic, attracting many people to visit from 6 November 2021. On 28 March 2022, it was announced that visitors had exceeded 500,000, so they planned to extend the exhibition duration until 15 July 2022 (the original closing date was 6 April 2022). On 3 July 2022, it was announced the visitor numbers had reached more than 1,000,000 and that around 87% of them were from Sichuan, of which Chengdu is the provincial capital. Compared to the total residential population in Chengdu, which was recorded as 20,937,757 in May 2021, compared to Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing, this size is not so large by Chinese standards.
Finally, the total number of visitors was more than 1,100,000 over 252 days (6 November 2021 to 15 July 2022). These visitor numbers are three times that of teamLab in Beijing for 2017 or the data of Today Art Museum in 2017 (see Figure 8), but it should be remembered that the 2021 Chengdu Biennale was accessible to the public at no charge. It is unclear how many people would visit if there had been a charge, but we can be positive that contemporary art culture has been well-cultivated in Chengdu as a result. This show very likely became especially popular due to travel restrictions, meaning that most residents could not so easily visit to other Chinese provinces or abroad.

CONCLUSION
Opening and exhibition information is available on the MANA Global New Media Arts platform (https://www.manamana.net), established in 2016, including details of new media art events in China. Also included are colleges providing education concerning technology and art, and other relevant information like jobs and competitions. Before this website, MANA has also used Weibo since 2011 and WeChat since 2014, two leading Chinese social media platforms, to share exhibition news or new media artistic stories or designs.
It has become a new fashion trend to combine high-tech with art and this is popular with people in China. One common feature of artworks in exhibitions is that they interact with people through technology. So, the term new media art can be seen as interactive art. There is a perceived need to attract plenty of visitors to participate.
As for reasons why new media art exhibitions have attracted so many visitors rapidly, one factor is the commercial discount through spreading the word on social media. For example, if a visitor shares the pictures that they have taken on WeChat and then gains more than 30 "likes" (thumbs up) from their friends, they obtain a discount from the Today Art Museum. The sale means one person spreads the news to at least 30 people with the help of social media. TikTok also plays a vital role in spreading videos of exhibitions. So, these factors of commercial discounts and social media, as well as longer academic lectures, have helped to increase the rapid development of new media art in China. After Covid-19, the local government supported and sponsored the successful art culture in Chengdu. This has helped to cultivate contemporary art. China's first contemporary art gallery was Upriver Gallery (see Figure 9), established in October 1998 with the approval of the Chengdu Bureau of Cultural Affairs. However, Upriver Gallery was closed in 2001 due to lack of financial resources from the investor. Then, the Chengdu Biennale began to help invigorate artistic culture in the city. In short, Chengdu has a different culture from other Chinese cities, with its ancient history and modern developments.