A month of Dutch media in Shanghai

In August the Dutch Culture Centre will be dedicated to digital art and new media. Innovative Dutch and Chinese artists, architects and digital media makers demonstrate how media, art and technology can contribute to the design of a future city. Adaptation: Designing The Future City consists of an exhibition by V2_ and the Dynamic City Foundation and a forum with Neville Mars. Those who decide to stay at home can follow some of the activities online.

EXHIBITION

The exhibition in the Dutch Culture Centre includes 3rd I, a miniature utopian city with interactive robots will be exhibited in large cubes, and Genetic City, a 46-metre long video installation resulting from an experimental collaboration between ten well known architects that showcases design proposals for green cities of the future. The exhibition opened on 14 August.

3rd I (Third Eye), an installation by the V2_ Institute for Unstable Media, consists of maquettes of imaginary buildings and remote-controlled robots fitted with cameras that explore the cityscape. These 'third eyes' are operated by visitors to the exhibition in Shanghai, by visitors in Rotterdam, where the installation can be viewed virtually in the MK Gallery, and by virtual visitors to the 3 rd I website www.the-third-eye.org/exhibitions/online.
Visitors to the Chinese and Dutch exhibition spaces can communicate with each other using specially developed telepresence furniture in the Telepresence Cafe. Teams of Chinese and Dutch architects, students and artists, including Zoro Feigl, constructed this almost 18m2 miniature ideal city in May and June 2010. The installation also includes video portraits of the teams by filmmaker Maartje Nevejan of Couscous Global. 3rd I is an initiative of Graham and Christina Smith from CyberCity Ruhr, realised in collaboration with V2_ and Shanghai eARTS.

Genetic City introduces a radical response to the breakneck urbanisation in China. The organic growth of a new and sustainable city (Caofeidian) from 2010 to 2040 is simulated in an ongoing and shared design process: evolutionary planning as a means to combat extremely rigid and short-lived urban development. For this, the Dynamic City Foundation asked ten progressive Dutch and Chinese architecture firms to conceive a sustainable development plan, which they designed in relay, successively modifying previous efforts. Genetic City is an impressive panoramic video installation with contributions by Urbanus, MAD, Rocksteady Design, Powerhouse Company, MVRDV, BAU, Tsinghua School of Architecture, Urban China, ZUS en MARS-1.

Forum: Green from Scratch (15 August)
The day after the opening Neville Mars from the Dynamic City Foundation will host an ongoing 'organic debate' in the forum From Scratch to Green. A panel of thirty internationally recognised specialists will discuss how a sustainable city can be actually realised >>read more

More online information
Adaptation: Designing the Future City www.adaptation.nu
3rd I (Third Eye) www.the-third-eye.org
Genetic City + Forum burb.tv/view/B.A.R.C._-_Greening_the_Metropolis
Designing the Hybrid City www.themobilecity.nl/adaptation

Sponsors
The exhibition, the forum and the conference were partly funded by Acer, TNT, the Mondriaan Foundation, Rotterdam City, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (BKVB), The Netherlands Architecture Fund and Dutch DFA.

Partners & Sponsors