March 30, 2023
On 12 March, XJTLU Entrepreneur College (Taicang) held its first Open Day with the School of Cultural Technology participating in the event and attracting many first-year students who stopped by their stand to participate in interactive activities.
During the Open Day, the School of Cultural Technology showcased Building G, where the school is located, and had several activities. At the beginning of this semester, many special classrooms and laboratories of the school were officially put into use, including an audio-visual editing room, an immersive recording studio, etc., each equipped with first-class equipment. The first-year students stopped by each featured classroom to watch and admire during the school tour.
The School of Cultural Technology presented a wide variety of exhibits to show the many possibilities that exist for art. The school exhibited student works in the ground-floor lobby, entitled “Here and Now”. By using software processing, they created a variety of artistic concepts to showcase their creativity. This exhibition presents six students’ works to show the audience the diversity of the student’s imaginations. They served as the most representative six of the cohort. These diverse generative artworks span multiple concepts and use various techniques and strategies, including generative sound, sound capture, 3D, AI life, and time, showcasing the breadth of exploration and experimentation. The exhibition was aimed to launch the school’s vision of a “living campus”. All the works were constantly evolving and changing and in response to the changing environment.
Andrew O’Dowd, the program director of The School of Cultural Technology, guided some students from the school to conduct an exhibition entitled “ATE it, LOVE it”. The exhibition was divided into several sections, including self-portraits, multimedia artwork, interactive artwork, and world-building computer games. The exhibition attracted many first-year students to visit, listen to the explanation of seniors and participate in the interaction.
Furthermore, second-year student Li He gave an audio-visual performance titled “Hybrid”, lasting nearly two hours. The performance was shown on three large screens simultaneously, using a wide range of digital and analogue electronic technology. A combination of electric guitars, effects pedals and mixers were used to distort and mix the audio while capturing the paint dripping live on video. There are two keywords in this visual art, “Hybrid” and “Live”. “Hybrid” means visual effects achieved by combining physicality and digital processing. "Live" means that the visual effects are generated in real time during the musical performance.
The School of Cultural Technology also prepared an installation workshop, inviting first-year students to create their miniature installations. The workshop provided miniature figures and art supplies for participants to create interesting installation artworks. This workshop encouraged students to build fantastic visual stories with scale and context.
By Ruinan Shi
Edited by Wenzhen Li
Photos courtesy of UMC, Zihan Wang, Zihan Ning, Zhichao Liu
March 30, 2023