WEEK 7: INDUSTRIALISATION AND CAO FEI'S RMB CITY

1. What and when was the Industrial Revolution?


The industrial revolution was an era in which fundamental innovations and technological advancements brought about drastic changes in society, during the late 1700s and most of the 1800s. Social and financial infrastructures were 'revolutionized' because everything was done differently from the way it was being done before because new technologies were now available. As far as I could gather, most of these changes were brought on by agricultural advancements which enabled a greater amount of produce and lifestock to be maintained, enabling a larger workforce to be fed, and thus creating a more productive society, which in turn, led to bigger cities and more advancements in all areas of the human spectrum-technology, society, politics, arts etc. The industrial revolution started in england and soon spread across the globe from there.


UMBERTO BOCCIONI'S 'The City Rises'

The subject matter of this painting is pretty busy, there's a lot of stuff in there. Overall I guess its sort of expressing the tumultous and vibrant nature of man made technology and the animal beast coming together to create dynamic figures on canvas, amongst other things. The people and the beast-like animals (looks like horses i think) are painted in a very dynamic manner, very passionate and colourful and full of movement, all over the page. But the buildings and man made structures are arranged slightly more orderly, and structurely, with proper perspective and stuff, but despite their orderly man made arrangement, they don't seem to detract from the dynamic liveliness of the scene, so I guess Boccioni is showing that the two come together to create something magnificent.

As for the celebration of movement and machines, yeah that's definetly in there. I think the festive colours alone would suggest that. But also the way the figures are just writhing with exuberant motion, and the way the man made structures, or 'the machine' so to speak, is kind of towering over these figures in a fatherly sort of way as if to say "I am a big industrial city full of machines and people made me and i am fond of people and animals and now they can all run around and play within my walls, so we all get along really well around here."

GIACOMO BALA'S 'Dynamism of Dog on a Leash'

The subject matter of this painting seems to a little black poodle on a leash, being held by a short cartoony fat guy. But the legs of both the dog and the owner are a blur because they seem to be moving back and forth really fast, presumably running or walking. So I guess it's a study in movement,or the expressing thereof, which is probably something quite modern for its time because they didn't really have cartoon strips back in 1912, where that sort of thing was prevalent.

I don't really see much of a celebration going on here, maybe it's more of a playful study or experimentaion on the whole movement and machinery thing. What's interesting about this is that this is ,in a way, the forerunner to the'Tom and Jerry' cartoon strips of today. These paintings of literally trying to convey motion through multiplying limbs and blurring, were said to be inspired by the advent of chronophotography during the very early 20th century. So it's kind of a pioneer painting in the sense that artist up to that point hadn't really attempted to capture actual motion on canvas before, and this painting is an experimentation in how to achieve that.


CAO FEI'S 'RMB City'

RMB city is virtual city built by 'China Tracy' in the virtual reality role-playing game 'Second Life'. It consists of various modern/futuristic looking abstract structures to create a weirdly disconcerting dystopian kind of enviroment, interlaced with playful colourful shapes, as well as eerie references to China's traditional history and culture, such as a half submerged stature of Mao, and a weird floating communist flag above the city. There are also a bunch of chinese icons like the Beijing Olympic stadium and a Panda, all coming together in a chaotic mish mash of sorts. The work is generally believed to be a musing on China's recent urban and cultural explosion, maybe western culture replacing communism in an overly excited ejaculation of pent-up wild colours and shapes.

A Utopia is an imaginary society that has perfect socio-political structure, and is basically a vision of an idealized, perfect place to live. A Dystopia is that imaginary society gone bad, sometime in the future. And it has usually gone bad because of the efforts made to create a Utopia.
RMB City is a good example of this because in a way it looks like it could be either of those, or both at the same time. It looks like it could be some kind of city in the future that was created with the idea of trying to create the perfect socio-political structure by making everything super eclectic and free spirited and letting a team of free love-all star hippies design all the buildings and art galleries. And that society has now become a Dystopia because it is simply too chaotic, and good old fashioned ideas like Hollywood action movies are no longer being made because A: there is no longer a financial infrastructure there to make them with, and B: because the studios have now been overrun by China Tracy and her band of abstract installationists and 7-minute short film makers. Now I'm not having a go at abstract installation art or short films here, not at all, I think it's great that they're there for people to (ahem) enjoy. I'm just saying that RMB City doesn't look like a place that I would be comfortable living in- too much of one thing and not enough balance. Hence, a Dystopia that started out as a Utopia because everyone was happy and free and running around expressing themselves. But no one kept the factories and gas stations running, so now there's no food and no more cinemas in RMB city.


5. Although the Modernist paintings and the contemporary digital work have emerged from
different contexts, there are also many similarities. Comment on the similarities that you can see in the work.

Even though the two paintings and RMB city are completely different mediums and frankly, look nothing alike whatsoever, I guess there are nonetheless, a few key similarities. For one thing, they're both fairly innovative, and actually quite grounbreaking in a way, because both paintings as well as MB City are pushing the envelope of their respective mediums , as well as their respective times. 'The City Rises' for example, is quite groundbreaking in the sense that it took Impressionism, which was probably the most modern style of painting at the time, and went one better by combining the stylization of Impressionist rendering and suggestion with an all new stylization of the actual composition and subject matter. I don't know if that makes any sense-what I'm trying to say is that impressionists stylized rendering by not colouring and shading everything out in painstaking detail, but instead came up with a new style that suggested a lot, and conveyed a lot more with fewer brush strokes. And what Boccioni, as well as his contemporary modernists did, was to invent a new style in terms of what they actually painted, and how they arranged on the canvas, again, conveying a lot more with fewer objects.
And Balla and his 'Poodle on leash' painting is also groundbreaking because he stylized movement. That is to say that it was a revolutionary way of conveying movement, because cartoons and animation and such didn't exist in his day, and he must have looked at motion blur or something in a photograph and came up with a way to capture the essence of movement on canvas.
And RMB City is groundbreaking because it is a whole new medium of art- sculpting something interactive in a virtual reality three dimensional space.
 And what ties all this together is that all three instances of breaking new ground here were brought on by the advancement of technology which we can now neatly tie back to the industrial revolution.
All three also share a distinct sense of curiosity that is almost visible in those works. A palpable sense of experimentation.